One, Two, erm……3?
As I think I mentioned already, I was lucky enough to get a Netbook for Christmas. Of course, to get the full benefit of my new machine, I really needed a Mobile Broadband connection to go with it. Since I would want to take the machine to hospital in Liverpool with me, I was looking for a “Pay As You Go” Broadband Dongle that had coverage here at home and in Liverpool. This narrowed the 
choice somewhat.
The selection process was a little tricky. Basically, my requirements were:
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PAYG. No Contract (I don’t need the dongle at home but would like to take it away in the Motorhome. So I only need credit when away from home rather than all the time).
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Coverage at home and in Liverpool but also good nationwide (Our Motorhome could take us anywhere).
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Price. This proved to be more confusing than I expected!
The short version of this tale is that only 3 fitted the bill. So I didn’t really get a choice in the end!
PAYG
Mobile Broadband is available with a long contract (similar to a Mobile Phone), a short contract (one or two months) or Pay As You Go (PAYG). Since I only need Mobile Broadband when I’m away from the house, I was looking for PAYG.
Not all operators offer PAYG, so I found I had a limited choice. Both Vodaphone and O2 dongles were available from ASDA along the road and 3 have a shop not too far from home. The other big operators (Virgin and Orange) only offer one/two month contracts. I ruled these out for being too complicated!
Price
Here it got really complicated and care needs to be taken to get value for money.
I came across two different pricing models for Broadband Data. You can either pay for a specific Time and get unlimited access during this period or you pay for the actual Data used.
You have to remember that any Unlimited package usually has a Fair Use Policy to go with it. I found that these Fair Use Policies were actually quite restrictive. O2 lets you buy a day, week or month with unlimited access. However, according to their Fair Use Policy a month of unlimited access is actually capped at 1GB and the shorter periods are proportionately less.
To me, paying for the data makes more sense and is more transparent. The more data you buy at a time, the cheaper it gets. The downside? The data allowance will expire after a fixed time period.
3 will let you buy data in blocks (1GB is the most popular). If I bought 1GB today I can start using it straight away. If I run out, I can buy more. If I don’t use it all within 30 days, it expires and I lose the balance. The trick is, to work out exactly how much data you are going to need! The more you buy, the cheaper it gets but if you buy too much and lose the balance, it’s false economy.
Coverage
Of the providers that met my needs above, only 3 had coverage both at home and in Liverpool. This pretty made the decision for me but I also prefer the pricing structure used by 3.
Result?
For some reason the 3 website wouldn’t play ball with my Credit Card so I popped in to one of their shops. The dongle I bought came pre-loaded with 3GB of data which would last for 3 months.
The device is Plug and Play, it just needs to be connected to a USB port. All the software needed is already on the Dongle, so it sorts itself out and lets you know when it is connected.
Coverage both at home and in Liverpool was excellent.
Perfect!
