Advice on Choosing a Mobile Broadband Service

If you want to use the internet on your laptop when you’re away from home, then mobile broadband is for you, but how do you choose a mobile broadband provider, and is the service any good? The key factors you’ll want to know about is how fast the broadband connection is likely to be, and how reliable it’s likely to be. With mobile broadband being a radio service, it’s more difficult to get an idea of how well the service might work for you simply because it is dependent on your exact location.

The first step in your research should be to check the mobile broadband coverage maps that each of the major providers have made available online. These will tell you whether you are in a 3G area for a given network. It’s critical to be in a 3G area as only then do you have the possibility of a fast mobile broadband connection (although you can’t be absolutely certain of this just from the map data). If you aren’t in a 3G area, then mobile broadband reverts to the GPRS standard, which results in a connection slower than old 56k dial-up, which is a nightmare if you’ve got used to a fast broadband connection. If the map does show you to be in a 3G area, you still can’t be guaranteed a good service. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the maps aren’t always accurate and they may not be detailed enough to take account of highly localised signal differences. Another issue is that even if you do have good signal strength, there may be so many people trying to use mobile broadband in the vicinity, that the connection speed gets badly slowed down, and the only solution to this will be when the network decides to boost its capacity in the area. To improve your chances of choosing the best mobile broadband in your area, we suggest the following:

1) If you know someone who already has mobile broadband, ask to borrow their USB modem and trial it in your area. The modem only takes a minute or two to install, and this will therefore quickly give you an idea of exactly how well mobile broadband will work in your location.

2) If you don’t know anybody with mobile broadband, then think about making use of a trial period from one of the networks, as most of them allow you to test the service and return it if you are not happy. However, just make sure that you follow their T&C’s carefully and return the modem in good time, as the networks can be strict in accepting returns.

3) Another check you can do is to take a look at your mobile phone. If you have a fairly recent handset it should have a 3G indicator which will show whether you are within your network provider’s 3G area. This is only of use of course if you are thinking about going with the same network for your USB mobile broadband dongle.

4) Read some user reviews of mobile broadband online. Our partner site, BestMobileBroadband.co.uk, has plenty of these, both good and bad, and they will give you a good insight into the various providers. Our impression is that Vodafone and T-Mobile are leading the way in overall service quality.

5) Look to see what awards have been won by a mobile broadband provider. Vodafone was the winner of Best Wireless ISP at the Internet Service Providers Awards, which was voted on by industry peers, and T-Mobile came first in the January 2009 YouGov DongleTrack mobile brodband survey. Winning any significant awards can give you extra confidence in the overall quality of service that a network is providing.

Our own choice of mobile broadband service was Vodafone, and we’ve been pleased with the performance and reliability of the service so far. It’s certainly fast enough to get on with standard web browsing and checking e-mails, and often fast enough to stream radio and video. 3G coverage is still mainly restricted to cities and large towns, but this is set to improve rapidly. Telecoms experts believe that mobile broadband could become the primary way people connect to the internet as early as 2010, so it is likely that all the major mobile networks will be looking to achieve full UK coverage as soon as possible. There are already hundreds of thousands of people using mobile broadband, and if you want to join them, then following our tips above should ensure that you find the best mobile broadband service for your requirements, and your first experience of mobile internet will hopefully be a good one.