Mobile Internet

[Tailendcharley]

 :D    Anyone out there have any experience or knowledge of hooking your mobile phone into a lap top and accessing the Internet...the idea rather appeals to

        me, pariculary when I am away in France but what would concern me is the cost...I've been reading some adverts which quote £10.00 per month for this

        facility but surely you have to pay for the phone call along with the internet facility...any advice would be appreciated...cheers



 :DSmithy :roll:

[Range Rover Blues]

I can't even get the internet to work properly at home, and if I want a mobile signal here I have to go outside and stand on the bumper of Blue.  The thought of trying to access the internet via a mobile 'phone just fills me with dispair.

[stewy1984]

Cant help with conneting mobile for internet, but i have had one of the usb modems that most phone companys do these days, 15quid a month and signed up for 24 months!!! no extra charges unless you go over the download limit. 2gb i think it was.

depending how long you are away in france for, i think most come with a 30day get out clause, thats what i did, just took it back when i'd had my use out of it  :lol: [-X

[carbore]

YES I do it all the time.

I have a nokia N95 on T-Mobile that I use to connect to the web via blue tooth or cable depending on which one of my laptops Im using.

You generall need to install the software that comes with most phones and use the connect to internet function and it will install any phone specific drivers. You MAY need to setup your connection details with some generic username and password info that you service provider issues or look http://www.filesaveas.com/  for various connection settings.

Now this will do it over GPRS or 3G when the phone is connecting you directly to the internet with the service provider acting as the ISP. Your phone provider contract MAY say you arnt supposed to do this and some of them block surfing somehow I think 3 used to which made thier internt claims a bit crap and it was burried in the small print.  I dont have any problems with t-mob though.  The reason they do this is thay want to ring fenc thier mobile internet revenues to "partner sites" and not have you off surfing on your mobile internet on something free!

Watch how much you pay per MB etc in your package ESPECIALLY form outside uk/roaming.

You can also use most mobiles a a modem, then you need an ISP whit a phone number that you dial up to.  There will be no content restrictions on this but it will cost per min and be slow (I think 9600baud is the limit).

To be honest the wave on plug in USB things are looking so cheap with sensible contracts that unless you have a high free MB tarrif and know what you are doing its woth getting one like stewey says as its so easy! (I may get one just for the convenience)

 

[Mareng]

I do it all the time with my 3 mobile PAYG phone, a tenner a month for 'fair use' which I have never succeded in exceeding, despite being online for probably 10 hours a day on average!!!

I use it for everything from forums, to youtube, to emails.

Just gotta make sure that your in a '3G' coverage area.

[carbore]

Glad to see 3 have stop blocking the net!

Even without 3G, GPRS is not unusable, I spent 2hrs managing a website via my mobile quite happily and diddnt realise I had turned off 3G to save the battery!

[waveydavey]

I am looking at doing the same for occasional use; Three PAYG.

The USB Modem is £99 but I understand if you drag a student into the shop with you then you can get it for half price; shame I'm on the wrong side of the pond!

[Freelander1980]

I use one of the 3 usb modems, pay about 15 quid a month for it and get 3gb download before being charged. Works out something stupid the amount of time that give syou on the internet etc well worth what i pay and what i use it in my eyes any way

[Mark_Solesbury]

Ive got 2 at the moment on trial with work

The 3 one is very good and seems to get a 3g reception anywhere i try it and will connect at 3.6mb

The Vodaphone one seems to have trouble finding a 3g reception inside, but when it does it can get a 6mb connection.

Think they are both limited to maximum download a month. 3 one stops after this but i think the vodaphone keeps going but you get charged more...

I think im going to keep the 3 one.

[Yoshi]

I am currently using my vodafone mobile fone for connecting to the internet as i no longer have broadband. 

I am getting on of the 3 usb modems in a week or so as they seem pretty good, am going for the £25 a month one though.  The other attractive thing about the 3 one is they only charge you 10p a mb when you have used your allowance, compared to vodafone who are charging me £1 per mb right now!!

Going now before they send me to the poor house!!

[Wireless]

Yeah, I'm a bleeding cheapskate, I have the 3 usb modem on the £10 per month broadband lite package, works very well, and the 1GB per month limit does me as there's only 2.4GB left on the lappy!

[Tailendcharley]

  :lol:    Thanks for all the replies fellas.    I hope this does'nt sound like a daft question but how long approximately do you get for say.'one GB'.  My intention if I   


            can set it up is to occasionally surf the web and listen to the radio when I am at my cottage in France. Is this feasible without taking out a second       


            mortgage.   Here's hoping.....Regards


 :D   Smithy :D

[Wireless]

The 1GB deal is restricted to the UK as far as I know.

I think the 3 Network eqivalent in France charges £3 a Megabyte, not the cheapest solution.  You'd probably be better off with a GPRS deal if that's all you plan to do in France.

GPRS is usually around 256kbps these days, so not as slow as people think.

You'd really have to work out what your bandwidth usage is before working out which deal suits, what streaming radio bandwidth are you listening to?  How big are the pages you're downloading?  How often do you switch between pages?

For example 151kbps (NASA TV), so watching for ~54 seconds continuously would use a Megabyte on 3, so more than £3 per minute!

Watching NASA TV continuously would use a Gigabyte in about 15.4 hours.

[lampyrover31]

HI
 I have a T mobile usb broadband thingy(connected via it now!). Only ever found 1 place that it wouldnt work as if it cant find 3G then it does High Speed data then GPRs then if all else fails it will dial up in the old fashioned way. (may have the order slightly wrong!). I have never exceeded the monthly download but not sure of the cost as its a company one(think its £15).
T mobile were also the cheapest international rates for phone when I was abroad a couple of weeks ago but not sure of the broadband prices.
Cheers
Baz

[Yoshi]

Well i am awaiting me 3 usb dongle to arrive so in the meantime i have purchased an internet add on for me 3 mobile fone.  Its not doing too badly at 480kbps  :lol:

[UKJeeper]

3G on the laptop? Good idea! how about combining them. Look what the postmans bringing me in the morning:





 

1200 minutes. 1000 text, unlimited (subject to acceptable useage policy, blah blah) internet. phones free, £45 per month. Accepts MicroSD cards up to 8gb.

Not everyones cup of tea perhaps, but as some of you know, i actually USE all the features that devices like these offer.

Not much bigger than the N95, Itoy, etc (when closed). I'm really looking forward using TomTom, viewranger (Thanks Andy!), Google Earth, movies, etc on that big screen.

Looking forward to playing with it.







BTW, some of the laptops (toshiba for instance) come with a sim card slot for 3G connections.

C'mon courier!!!!

[SteveGoodz]

:D    Anyone out there have any experience or knowledge of hooking your mobile phone into a lap top and accessing the Internet...the idea rather appeals to

        me, pariculary when I am away in France but what would concern me is the cost...I've been reading some adverts which quote £10.00 per month for this

        facility but surely you have to pay for the phone call along with the internet facility...any advice would be appreciated...cheers



 :DSmithy :roll:

Just watched Watchdog on BBC. People have been running up huge bills by using the Internet via a mobile or 3G dongle abroad ~ it's called "data roaming" and right now the network companies (Orange, Vodafone, etc) can charge what they like as it's not covered by UK contracts. One chap ran up a bill of over £9000!!

Tread carefully chaps and chapesses :twisted:

[Yoshi]

i saw that as well, the european regulatory body doofer have said that if the companies dont reduce the costs of it then they will get legislation in force to make them do it like they did with the international call charges.

[SteveGoodz]

i saw that as well, the european regulatory body doofer have said that if the companies dont reduce the costs of it then they will get legislation in force to make them do it like they did with the international call charges.

Yeah, but don't hold your breath while you wait for the EU to bring forth the legislation. It took more than 5 years to get the voice roaming legislation through the European parliament.

My son works as an accountant for Orange and reckons the amount they get from data roaming more than pays for the cheap deals in the UK. If they're forced to reduce the prices they can charge then UK prices will have to rise to balance it. All the other network providers will be in the same boat ~ they use the same business models.