A couple of weeks ago Sam from 3mobilebuzz letting me know he’d just recieved several of 3’s brand new HSDPA USB sticks and wondering if I’d like to review one. As it happens I’ve actually been looking at mobile broadband solutions so I was quite keen to have play with what 3 has to offer.
Basically these USB sticks provide mobile broadband internet access. Essentially armed with one of these and a laptop you can work absolutely anywhere (ok anywhere you can get a mobile signal), that’s a great freedom, especially for anyone running a small business.
The dongle measure just 87.3 x 25.3 x 12 mm (in other words pretty much the standard size for USB stick), weights 50g and has a maximum download speed of 3600 kbps and maximum upload speed of 384 kbps, although 3 quote their maximum network speed as 2.8 MBs. Out of the box it support Windows and Mac operating systems.
Setting Up The 3 HSDPA USB Stick On Vista
Setting it up on Windows Vista is as simple as plugging it in and following the onscreen instructions. However I don’t tend to lug around my Windows Vista based laptop, it’s just a bit too big, heavy and expensive to drag around coffee shops instead I have an excellent, highly portable Asus EEE PC.
If like me you hate sending text messages on tiny mobile phone keyboards the you’ll be happy to know that using the USB stick you can now type them out properly on your Windows laptop.
Setting Up The 3 HSDPA USB Stick On The Asus EEE PC
To be fair 3 only claim that the USB stick supports the Windows 2000, XP, Vista or and Mac OSX operating systems, so I didn’t expect it to be easy to setup and use on my Linux based EEE PC. However there is a great user community around the EEE PC that usually figures out how to get things working with it so I did a quick Google only to find that the answer I was looking for is in one of Sam’s posts which links to Dale Lane’s blog and his guide to Using a 3 mobile broadband dongle with the EEE PC.
So What Advantages Does Mobile Broadband Offer A Small Business?
Well if like me the majority of your business is run over the Internet then mobile broadband is great, it means you can work almost anywhere without having to worry about the availability, security or price of Wifi hotspots. Even if you don’t tend to work away from the office there’s also another real advantage (especially as 3 has just dropped the price of the USB dongle to £49.99 on their Pay As You Go (PAYG) mobile broadband service and it’s free if you take their Broadband Lite contract for 18 months at £10 per month), it makes an excellent backup connection if your main broadband provider has an outage (which, in my experience happens far too often).
So What Do I Think?
It’s brilliant, despite having a techie background, I prefer my technology to work straight out of the box and this does. It’s easier to setup than standard broadband and so far I’ve managed to get a connection everywhere I’ve tried. Will I be buying one? Yes at £10 per month it’s a nice cheap backup for our office broadband and that’s before I even consider the possibility of working anywhere with my EEE PC! Oh and if you’re already a 3 mobile voice customer you can get 50% off at the moment - shame I’m not.
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I would warn people to check the coverage first as a friend of mine got one of those dongles and could only get dialup speed and ended up sending it back.
It’s a great idea in theory but check you can get good coverage from where you will be using it from.
A good point, though I was pleasantly suprised at how good coverage was in the areas I tried.
Caroline - please don’t include keywords in the name field (unless they really are part of your name).
Hi folks! There is ALREADY a low-cost router out there which supports this modem (and MANY other kinds too!), called the Dovado UMR. You can read more about it on http://www.dovado.com, however is available on http://www.infoferenda.eu at a very low price. I booked one since I have this modem.
I have just got one of these from 3 and it works great under Windows but I have yet to try the instructions for getting it working on an Asus Eee PC under Linux. I got it because my OneTel ADSL connection has been down since Friday. I really want to get one of the routers from Billion or Vigor that can use a 3G device as a backup connection, but I’m now wishing I’d got the less cool looking Huawei E220 as that is listed as being supported by the router manufacturers (and works with the Eee out of the box.) If anyone finds the E169G works with a router please post the model number here.