[jonsteele]

I live in a rural area and whilst I can get ADSL broadband, it's shite. At best I get 1MB but most of the time it's below that and sometimes it's slower than dial up! It's totally frustrating for personal use (took 14 hrs to download a 666MB iPhone update yesterday) but I also need to work from home occassionally and that's impossible when it's at it's slowest!

I've been looking at Satelite Internet and can get 10MB download speeds via it. However, it's not cheap £25/month for 4GB usage and around £300 initial setup (and that's for me to install). In addition, I've been told it's no good for gaming due to latency (not an issue as we can't game with what we've got - the kids will still bitch, but shit happens).

Anyone on here ever used it and can give me the benefit of their experiences before I take an expensive plunge?

[BanziBarn]

Do you get uploads too via the satelite, or do they go via ADSL?

[m@rk]

It can be affected by weather and also check what your upload speeds look like.

Latency will mean that gaming is out and also things like VoIP (Skype etc).

I am assuming that if you are looking at this, you are desperate as this is normally the last resort. In this case, have you looked at 3G mobile broadband. Normally I would not recommend this however if available, it's probably still better than what you are looking at?

[jonsteele]

You can have either downloads only or downloads and uploads - I'd go for both. Haven't really thought about 3G mobile - will have a look at it as there's a 3 mast 100m away from our house! Is it possible to have a wireless LAN with 3G, i.e. plug the dongle into a router rather than a PC (or Mac in my case)? There is a PS3, XBox, 2 iPhones, 2 iPads and a couple of old laptops to connect too!

[m@rk]

Originally Posted by jonsteele

Is it possible to have a wireless LAN with 3G, i.e. plug the dongle into a router rather than a PC (or Mac in my case)? There is a PS3, XBox, 2 iPhones, 2 iPads and a couple of old laptops to connect too!

Yes you can do exactly that.

Something like this would do the job perfectly

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-M...3062693&sr=8-2

You just plug your dongle into the back of the router.

The only thing to watch out for is usage caps but then the other option has those as well so maybe not such an issue.

[jonsteele]

Looks the ticket and cheaper than the satelite options. What sort of download speeds am I likely to get, can't seem to find it on the 3 website?

[m@rk]

Originally Posted by jonsteele

Looks the ticket and cheaper than the satelite options. What sort of download speeds am I likely to get, can't seem to find it on the 3 website?

Depends!

On things like coverage etc etc

So I currently have 4 different mobile broadband SIMs that I use as I travel around. I put them all into a MiFi device depending on where I am.

So Vodafone have fantastic covereage and are rock solid but even when you have a 5 bar connection, throughput is sloooooow. My gut feel is that there network is overloaded much of the time.

I have a T-Mobile SIm and an iPass SIM (that used the T-Mobile network). The iPass SIM has recently replaced my main Vodafon one and I am blown away by how much quicker than Vodafone it is. I am guessing this is down to less traffic.

I also have an Orange SIM but as T-Mobile and Orange are merging networks right now it's kind of irrelevant.

I have also heard good things about Three but have never used them myself.

I would say you need to find out who runs the transmitter 100m from your house

So with a good signal, my iPass and T-Mobile SIMs show (using speedtest.net) between 2mbit/s and 3mbit/s download. Upload rally varies between 500kbit/s and 1mbit/s. I have seen 5 mbit/s download before now but that was central London late at night

Sitting at home right now (somewhere in deepest darkest Lincolnshire), I have just fired up speed test from my Android Handset via my WiFi on the T-Mobile SIM. I am about 1.5 miles as the crow flies from the transmitter inside a normal brick built house.

Ping = 200ms
Download = 1432kbp/s
Upload = 443kbp/s

[jonsteele]

Ta, the mast near us is 3 and T Mobile. I shall seriously look into this.

Thanks for your help.

[Dannyrado]

I have a 3 dongle, and to be fair i am seriously impressed with it. I travel around North Wales, and it pretty much works everywhere that i've tried it. I guess though that this is not an issue with the mast so close.

When i do connect i'm usually happy with speed, but i'm not gaming, so i can't say.

The only thing is the caps. I have 1GB as that's more than adequate for me. If i were you i'd have an ask around to friends and such. My mate used to work for 3 and gave me one of his staff discounts, i've paid £5 a month for 4 years (ish) now, and he left the firm 3 years ago, i've even got the faster dongle upgraded for free recently.

The one thing to beware of with 3 is every call centre is in India, and they are seriously annoying. If you ever do come to cancel you will have the WORST time ever, they are very very persistant.

[briers]

I was going to suggest 3G instead

Satellite was always ropey and expensive


I'm always tethering my mobile to my macbook air when i'm on the move. I can work from anywhere then. I'm on o2 which has a fairly decent HSDPA network and my download speed is around 3MB/Sec on average. Pings are higher than broadband but plenty fast enough.

I've tried Orange and that does have a good 3G signal most places but a lot of it is the lower speed, around 0.7MB/Sec.

3 is good as long as you can get a signal. Vodaphone on par with o2, slightly less coverage than orange but when there is coverage it's usually faster.

[gIzzE]

Three is awesome imho.


I am with o2 and their data coverage is shocking in comparison.
They only needed to cover 96% of the population to get the 3G license, so they went to all the most densely populated areas to achieve this, they covered the absolute minimum they needed to.

I can't get a 3G signal in parts of central London with o2, where as with Three I have never been anywhere where it looses signal, sometimes on a train for 30 seconds in the middle of no where, but very, very rarely.

I am going to pay to get out of my o2 contract and move over.