February 23, 2010
O2 have topped the mobile broadband speed test charts for downloading music to be found as the fastest mobile broadband provider in the UK with Vodafone found as the fastest for downloading web pages.
Although the test were commission by O2 they were performed by an independent contractor with the results being independently verified by the British Approvals Broad for Telecommunications (BABT).
 The tests were performed by Siroda who tested the mobile broadband speeds of the mobile broadband providers at the 20 largest UK cities during January, which included London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield.
Music files were downloaded and the speed measured and also the time it took to load web pages with the tests taking place between 10am and 10pm Monday to Sunday over a 60 day period.
Of the 20 cities that the tests were performed at, O2 Mobile broadband was fastest at 12 of these locations and second in 4 of the other locations.
In London, O2 Mobile broadband on average took 1.7 seconds to download a web page which was 30% fastest than the slowest operator.
It was quite an even spread overall for the web page download speeds for the 20 cities tested.
Below shows the mobile broadband operator and how many cities they were quickest at loading web pages at with Vodafone just topping the charts.
O2 – 4
Orange – 4
Three – 3
Vodafone – 5
T-Mobile – 4
The results for the fastest for downloading music files are as follows.
O2 – 12
Orange – 0
Three – 1
Vodafone – 5
T-Mobile – 2
Towards the end part of 2009, O2 installed 40 new masts around London in a £30 million investment in its network infrastructure and with London being one of the places that O2 came top in this investment will have helped them with their mobile broadband speeds.
What we need is this same investment to be taken in other locations around the UK to help build on the mobile broadband speeds that other parts of the country can receive.
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February 22, 2010
Virgin Media have launched a range of Travel Passes for those who want to use the Internet abroad.
The Virgin Media Travel Passes are designed to offer mobile Internet and mobile broadband access for users to get online anywhere in the EU.
 The new Travel Passes will offer an Internet connection for users while away abroad but take out the risk of running up huge bills and getting a “Bill Shock”.
“Bill Shock” is the term used for unexpectedly large bills caused by using mobile Internet and mobile broadband. Only earlier today we reported a story of a student who ran up a £8,000 mobile broadband bill in just over a month while away in France.
The Virgin Media Travel Passes come as either a Mobile Internet pass to a Mobile Broadband Pass.
The Mobile Internet EU Travel Passes on offer are available are either a one hour pass that costs £4 or a 24 hour pass for £6.
To activate the EU Mobile Internet Travel Pass users simply need to text BUY + pass name (e.g. 24HR or 1HR) to the short code: 23456
The Mobile Broadband EU Travel Passes come with 4 different options.
A one day costing £10 for 10Mb, 3 days costing £15 for 15Mb, 7 days costing £30 for 30Mb or the option of a 30 day travel pass costing £60 for 60Mb.
To activate a Mobile Broadband Travel Pass users simply need to text BUY + pass name (e.g. 1DAY or 3DAY) to short code 23456
The countries that the Virgin Media Travel Passes are available to be used in within EU/EEA zones include:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus (excluding Turkish Northern Cyprus), Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (including French Guinea, Guadeloupe, Martinique & Reunion), Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal (including Azores & Madeira), Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain (including Canary Islands), Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway.
Virgin Media are the largest UK fibre broadband provider and are a quad-play provider who offer broadband, TV, phone and mobile.
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A university student who went to Paris to study has been left with a mobile broadband bill of almost £8,000!
William Harrison, aged 22, went into an Orange store and asked the assistant about mobile broadband and using it in France. He was advised by the staff in the Orange store that mobile broadband would be fine to use in France and recommended him a short term contract that offered him 3Gb usage and told him that this would be “perfectly ample” for what he needed it for. His usage was often to use Skype for phone calls and he didn’t download or watch videos or other applications that used allot of data.
William regularly used Skye back home to make free phone calls over the Internet and thought that he would be able to save money by doing so when in France.
What William was unaware of was that the data transfer was not able to be used outside of the UK and that Orange were charging him £2.94 per Mb for using the dongle abroad.
After his first month of using the mobile broadband dongle abroad last September he received his first bill for a whopping £6,101.56. Upon receiving this he straight away queried the bill and got the mobile broadband dongle blocked so he could not rack up any more charges, however in the meantime between receiving his bill and the dongle getting blocked he racked up a further £1,547.21 and took his total bill up to £7,648.77!
When Williams father, Roger phoned up to speak to Orange about this the Orange operator he spoke to was shocked that this bill had got so large as there should be a £40 per month limit. However the operator was seemingly also unaware that this did not apply to usage when abroad.
There is new European laws to be introduced to help stop users getting “Bill Shock” where the bill would cut off when it reaches a limit of 50 Euros (about £44), although users can alter this limit if they wish.
These laws however, although introduced last year didn’t have to be implemented until 1st March this year.
It is understood that the bill has been halved by Orange and payment terms of 24 months have been made available to William to pay back the mobile broadband bill.
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February 17, 2010
With the World Cup taking place this year in South Africa we have seen that for any football fans who want mobile broadband can combine these and get a football themed mobile broadband dongle.
 Huawei have created a 3G mobile broadband dongle int he shape of a football that will be available by the time of the 2010 Fifa World Cup starts. Ultimately it is just a bit of a novel gadget but it could start to show that the next batch of mobile broadband dongles are not boring but could actually start to be seen a cool accessories for their users.
 The football dongle is compatible with Windows 7, Linux and Max.
We don’t have any pricing or the date it is likely to be made available as yet.
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December 4, 2009
Three mobile broadband has had it’s prices cut to offer the cheapest mobile broadband deals in the UK.
 The entry level mobile broadband deal from Three has been reduced from £10 per month down to £7.50 per month, this includes 1Gb of data use per month and is available on either an 18 or 24 month contract and also comes with a free USB modem.
The same deal is also available but with a MiFi (Mobile WiFi device) for a cost of just £9.50 per month.
Any usage over the 1GB limit is charged at 10p per MB, so it is worth making sure that 1GB is sufficient!
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December 3, 2009
Virgin Media are to launch a new mobile broadband dongle which will offer a headline Virgin Mobile Broadband speed of 7.2Mb.
The likely hood of receiving 7.2Mb mobile broadband is unlikely and the speed users receive will vary very much on their location and the distance they are from the mobile transmitter.
The new dongle also comes with a Micro SD slot that can be used to saving data too.
Virgin Mobile Broadband can be taken up on either monthly tariffs or 18 month contracts and will cost either £10 or £15 depending on if you choose the 1GB or 3GB monthly usage limit.
Virgin are now the second operator to offer the up to 7.2Mb Mobile broadband option alongside Vodafone.
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November 27, 2009
Vodafone are not going to charge customers in the UK today for any mobile Internet usage that they make today.
 The promotion is running a “Free Mobile Internet Friday” offer which is available to both pay monthly customers and those on Pay-As-You-Go Customers.
For those who pay to have mobile Internet included in their tariff will not have any data transfer they use on the Internet taken off their monthly allowance.
This is a one day promotion so any Vodafone customers should make the most of it while it is available.
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November 25, 2009
The average mobile broadband speeds that were found by BroadbandGenie show that from the 3,600 users that were tested the average speed was less than 1Mb.
The exact figure they found was a mobile broadband speed of just 0.87Mb which is hugely slower than the advertised 3.6Mb and 7.2Mb that is advertised by the mobile broadband providers.
Of those who used the broadband speed test those who managed a mobile broadband speed of 3Mb or above was just 0.5%, with 65% getting speeds that were under 1Mb, with 39% of these results actually being under 0.5Mb!
Around a quarter (26%) got speeds of between 1Mb and 2Mb and just 7% managed to get between 2Mb and 3Mb.
What the big hope is that when 4G services start getting rolled out that mobile broadband speeds will increase dramatically, but hopefully the mobile broadband providers won’t just increase their advertised top speeds to speeds way greater than are likely to be received by most like most currently do at the moment.
There is more problems with mobile broadband still, with the use of smartphones and people using the Internet on the move more the capacity for mobile broadband is being stretched hugely as demand starts to close in on what is actually avai;lable, again 4G technology will hopefully go a long way to sorting this when it is launched.
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November 24, 2009
T-Mobile and Orange won’t hand over any of the radio spectrum that they own when they merge companies for other mobile operators to make use of for services such as mobile broadband.
The merger will make the combined T-Mobile/Orange business a 50:50 split between the two companies and give them a mobile market share of 37% in the UK.
They will however also hold between them 170MHz of the 1800Mhz spectrum, which is almost half and don’t feel that they should need to give it up for their merger to be approved.
Three Mobile only have a 15MHz share of the 1800Mhz spectrum which at present is only able to transmit 2G GSM technology, but that is soon to be changed.
So The T-mobile/Orange company will have 37% of the mobile customers in the UK but almost half of the 1800Mhz spectrum to play with.
There is also the fact that Vodafone and O2 have hold of the entire 900MHz spectrum between them so it looks like a bit of a stale mate, with neither majority holders of each of the spectrums likely to give any up unless the others also do.
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November 16, 2009
Those who want to get a Pay-as-you-Go mobile broadband dongle can get one half price until tomorrow if they choose O2 mobile broadband.
 O2 have halved the price of their mobile broadband pay as you go dongle from £29 down to £14.67 but it is only available at this price until the 17th November (tomorrow)!
O2 mobile broadband pay as you go customers have 3 different tariffs to choose from which include:
- £2 per day that gives 500Mb data
- £7.50 per week which has a weekly allowance of 1Gb
- £15 per month which includes 3Gb of data
All the deals also include unlimited WiFi access.
To get your half price O2 Mobile broadband Pay as you go dongle you need to get your order [placed online before midnight on the 17trh November by visiting www.o2.co.uk
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