Mobile broadband dongles – up to speed?
I’m trying out a T-Mobile pay-as-you-go mobile broadband dongle this month. It’s definitely marketed as ‘mobile broadband’. I think for that claim not to be misleading it should be consistently (or always?) better than a telephone line. Right?
Nothing in the T-Mobile shop (Oxford Street) had any disclaimers or warnings about what was meant by the term mobile broadband. Similarly, nothing in the packet that came with the USB modem mentioned what exactly was being provided or warranted in terms of speeds.
It looks like any mobile connection to the internet be marketed as broadband without much in the way of consumer certainty that it will measure up to a particular benchmark.
So here we go again. As our readers — both of you — may remember I was an early complainer about the misleading “up to” broadband speed claims that just did not hold water. Ofcom finally took some — but not enough — action when pressured by consumers, IT experts and the media. Ofcom has already promised to monitor this market carefully, but in my opinion it doesn’t look like T-Mobile is all that concerned about disclosures to consumers.
Anyways, my dongle has good days and bad days. Here’s the latest, which is pretty good (many times the speed is painfully slow — much slower than dial-up), and I think qualifies as broadband under Ofcom’s disappointing definition:
I’ll keep watching it…
BTW: My T-Mobile dongle service thinks Roger Darlington’s Commswatch website is inappropriate content!
[...] here to see the original: Mobile broadband dongles – up to speed? : | OfcomWatch | September 20th, 2009 | Tags: broadband-dongles, business dongles, definitely-marketed, dongle, [...]
I am looking to get a broadband dongle this has put me off t mobile. I used your advice and that http://www.bestdongles.co.uk here
Had one for six months. It has been very patchy to say the least. Coverage is always a problem. I live where there are a number of landscape inspired mobile black spots.
Don’t buy the T-mobile USB dongle.
You will be disappointed as I was on 3rd of August 2009.
Images are compressed, pixelated, blocky and unacceptably limited 256 web safe colours.
I design web pages on large screens and need pixel perfect accuracy.
Also they switched my PDA to compressed mode without asking me.
I have been complaining via phone, email and letter, since August, it is now October.
Be prepared for a long battle if you want to complain.
I am either ignored or fobbed off by their standard replies.
Even the emails are being dealt with by different people each time (like a call centre, but using emails).
The USB device is okay, but T-mobile’s network policy is not.
They route your web pages via a proxy sever and apply crappy ‘Onspeed-like’ compression along the way.
There was no ‘Quality of Service Warning’ at the point of sale.
We all know bandwidth is limited, but other companies, like 3 network, manage to deal with it without compressing images.
I think all companies cache the data. Fair enough, so long as when I make a very small change to a web page and upload it, I see the result on the actual web page immediately.
An email I received yesterday stated compression was industry standard. It then tried to ‘blind me with science’ by dropping in the term TCP/IP, which as an engineer I know to be totally irrelevant in the context of my complaint. The people who send these standard emails do not have a clue about the technology and they assume the public are the same.
T-mobile are not being straight and up-front with their customers at the point of sale.
It is obviously a Company that has PROFIT as the main priority and not CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. By the way they now have a new head of Customer Service, Mark Duncan, hopefully he will initiate improvements to the currently very poor levels of Customer Service. Gordon Ballantyne recently left T-mobile.
Regards and Good Luck
Kevin Dixon
[...] received this detailed comment on my earlier post about my disappointing experience with the T-Mobile [...]
I have had 3 mobile broadband which has been good when its good and very bad the occasional times it was bad, went onto Vodafone Mobile connect which is much slower,not possible to really engage it with downloading or uploading anything of size,never gets out of the green zone.Also the free trial of OnSpeed won’t install on vista.3 are mis-selling dongles saying they are faster when they are just the same 3.6mbps modems they were selling 3 years ago.Despite complaints to 3 about this,still getting calls offering me the old slow dongles at a reduced price,they must have a lot to sell off! 3 coverage definitely better than Vodafone,and 3 services easier to contact than the anonymous Vodafone,they just mislead you when you do contact them.
Mobile broadband (out and about and on the train and in the countryside) in this country is hopeless.
If you remain in a fixed high speed location (for example some towns near to London) then it is acceptable on some networks.
3 was okay in Billericay when I stayed there, quite fast in fact, but then not all the time.
When the Analogue TV signal is switched off the extra available spectrum created, should be sensibly used to help solve the current problems of mobile internet.
Kevin Dixon
I have been having similar trouble with my so called mobile broadband dongle. I used to work for a broadband company and know the speeds you get when using broadband and I can honestly say that 3 have not provided me with those speeds. even connecting to the network would take up to 10 attempts and each time sending me closer to madness.
When I enquired about “mobile broadband” I was assured that I would be able to stream programmes from bbc i-player and such sites, but this is clearly not the case. 3 are definitely misleading consumers by stating that its mobile broadband. They should advertise it as “can connect to the internet but cant promise that you will be able to use it….band”.
I feel that ofcom are allowing these companies to continue to mislead consumers. If I had known it was going to be like this I wouldn’t bothered, but unfortunately, I have learned a lesson.
Michael