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Hi not sure if this will interest anyone but today I took my NC10 on its first train journey! I am really intrested in going for mobile broadband but wanted to check it out first so my brother loaned me his Huawei E160G modem stick using 3mobile broadband. I found that coverage from Swindon to reading was really poor dropping out all the time. This did surprise me as most of the journey passes through built up areas. I managed to access the forum front page twice but was unable to get any further. However, changing in reading and heading towards Dorking Deepdene (Gatwick route) I got much better coverage and was able to read a number of posts but never more than 5mins before it would drop, some of that was due to tunnels but mainly just in the countryside I guess. Staions along the way was were I got the best coverage. Another change and headed towards Ashtead (Surry) and again intermittent coverage.
This was an okay experience but I think if I was to buy into a broadband package then I would be accepting that on a train my main use would be sending emails and waiting until I was on solid ground before doing any surfing. Would be interested to see how anyone has faired say with Vodaphone. Have to say I really liked the display on 3 as I could see clearly when I had coverage and therefore would connect and also I could keep an eye on how much I had downloaded.
Slightly of topic but this journey is one of the most boring journeys I do on a weekly basis but having the NC10 was just brilliant apart from playing with the broadband, catching up on emails, I watched a couple of episodes of NCIS and finished of with a game of tumblebugs, fantastic can’t wait till next Tuesday!
Helen
lol! That is of interest actually. I am commuting with my NC10 but with no Mobile Broadband yet. I’ll be going into London every day so I hope I get a better result. As soon as I do I will be posting back!
For now I find using Google reader in offline mode is great for keeping up to date. It downloads the last 2000 posts from your feeds and you can read them at your leisure. No pics come through though which make my icanhascheezeburger feed rather redundant!
I’v used a 3 phone to browse the interenet while travelling between wimbledon,waterloo and to eastbourne on train
And scarborough by car..it was on the 3 network…
So surely if your dongle struggles just connect your laptop to your phone via bluetooththats a good point but at present I don’t have a phone with 3. I was really just checking what the broadband connection would be like whilst travelling.
yeah ive used a bunch of the donlges and have pretty much resigned myself to them all being crap. none of them has a good signal to be honest.
i really wish the networks would stop pissing around with these shoddy usb modems and offer internal devices.Thanks Hef shows how slow I am i never thought of it being the dongle but more to do with 3 coverage. I remember doing the same journey with a 3 mobile years ago and being able to talk for a few mins before losing coverage. Each year and upgrade seemed to get me further down the train line but now of course if I chose I could probably talk the whole way! When you say you have used a number of differnt dongles would this be with differnt networks? I had heard that vodaphone offered better coverage but if its more a modem issue then I guess it wouldn’t matter
The bluetooth/phone route is looking like an option worth exploring right now imo. Especially if you don’t even need to take your phone out of your pocket.
But maybe a 3G NC10 mod will surface one day…
I tested my o2 xda orbit 2 as a bluetooth modem yesterday, it worked amazingly, connected at 2mbps (O2 use HSDPA in Leeds).
the thing you have to remember with the wifi broadband tech is that it’s in its infancy in britain. coverage is crap, the modems are crap and roaming is crap.
remember the early days of mobile phones when you would be using your mobile in your car or on the train and you would suddenly get cut off because your phone decided it was time to switch from one mast to another? that’s exactly what these modems are doing.
if you are lucky enough to live outside a major city there’s also very little chance of you being able to do much moving around as the 3+G coverage is patchy at best in less built up areas. you are more often than not only getting a gprs connection (most of the modems switch to the classic gprs when they cant get any 3g action) which as we all know is basically useless for anything more than very slow email.they shouldn’t really be calling it mobile broadband as much as they should be calling it “variable location broadband” since pretty much any notable movement of the devices results in at best a shitty connection with dropouts everywhere.
I use a 3 dongle the huwaei e220 in london and have to say it was pretty solid with speedtest.net reporting approx 1.3m average over a few tests on diff days. I flashed the firmware with the aussie firmware and its capable of going upto 7mps (obviously not on 3) but if i switch to voda its unlocked now so can use the modem. at only 7.5 for 5gb its a right bargain.
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