Best Mobile Broadband For Dublin Region?

BENJANI-4

Im looking to get mobile broadband on contract for either 12 or 18 months ( not important). Vodafone seems to be the best offer atm with a free modem(7.2mbps)and 14.99 a month with a 10gb download allowance....not looking to spend more than 20 a month. does anyone know if vodafone are any good for mobile bb or is provider better than another? vodafone,02,3,meteor and eircom recently have introduced mobile broadband. anyone with any input please feel free to do so.
cheers

jor el

Don't buy any of these unless you need them on the move. For a fixed location, you could effectively be buying fixed price dial-up.

BENJANI-4

thing is i only want to spend 20 a month and with mobile bb i can use my laptop as a router and use my ps3 online. my house is in the city centre so signal should not be a problem....but maybe im being naive

watty

Each mast only covers a small area, the number of people that can connect at once is very small.

It's especially poor for gaming as speed will vary from 0.05Mbps to 5Mbps over a few minutes (average can be anything from 100kbps to 3000kbps). Latency (ping) varies rapidly from 120ms (typical) down to 90ms and up to 250ms occasionally peaking near 2000ms (2s) when speed drops under 100kbps (0.1Mbps).

It may drop connections or not connect at all. It's the Mobile Phone network and voice calls (150 to 500 times less data/cost for operator as same retail value of Internet data) have priority.

Digiweb Metro, Imagine/IBB Breeze (not Ripwave) or UPC is much better if you have no phone line. If you have a phone line and are keeping it, then consider DSL (eircom, Vodafone/perlico/BT, Smart, Magnet, Imagine, Digiweb or UTV).

jor el

BENJANI-4 wrote: »

thing is i only want to spend 20 a month and with mobile bb i can use my laptop as a router and use my ps3 online. my house is in the city centre so signal should not be a problem....but maybe im being naive

Being city centre means you're more likely to suffer high contention. Don't be so sure about the laptop bridging the connection to the PS3 either, that has a patch history of working. Many have tried, some succeed and some don't. It's just unreliable. Even if it does work, 3G is not well suited to gaming, as the latency as 150ms at best (poor for games) and as much as 1s at worst (useless).

If you want to only spend 20 euro a month, look into Digiweb or UPC.

Dogster

BENJANI-4 wrote: »

thing is i only want to spend 20 a month and with mobile bb i can use my laptop as a router and use my ps3 online. my house is in the city centre so signal should not be a problem....but maybe im being naive

I can only talk about Three. If you are in Dublin City, it is possible that you will receive a signal at full strength. That said, it is very likely that you will suffer frequent disconnections and snail like speeds. The radio based internet system as used by Three, is very much affected by the user load on the cell sites, it is very easy for individual cell sites to become saturated. If you are working off a saturated cell site, expect frequent disconnections and snail like speeds. Whilst Three at first glance does seem good value, it is my understanding that NTL provides basically unlimited traffic within the constraints of what a normal domestic user might be expected to use, whereas if my memory serves me right Three billed service is limited to 15 Gigabytes total down and upload per month and Three's pay as go service is limited to 10 Gigabytes per 25 Euro tranche. If you watch a lot of for example Youtube you could easily go through more than 10 Gigabytes of downloading in less than two weeks. If your best option in a mobile service is Three and you have to have a mobile service availability, the Three operation is so appallingly bad, that what your best option is likely to be, is to get a quality fixed line service like NTL for your residence and a non contract pay as you go Three dongle that you buy vouchers for from the likes of newsagents, when you need to use it. Three " broadband " does not even work within the limited capabilities of a radio internet system, think of it as a crappy iteration of a radio internet system and you will not be far off. As for gaming on a Three radio based internet system, it can cope with Microsoft Flight Simulator FS 2004 gaming, when the Three system is working well but MS Flight simulator gaming has a very low data transmission requirement, try and do it for something that involves a lot of data transmission and you probably with not even be able to successfully log on to the server, even if the Three internet radio system is having a good day.

BENJANI-4

I'v considered all options now and i think UPC would be the best option and with my roommates chippin in it works out the same but more reliable and cheaper also the download limit isn't capped if i pay 30 a month.


thanks for your input

watty

Not capped as much. There is a cap/FUP (120G maybe? Anyway typically TEN times Mobile).

Speed on average 10x to 50x faster depending on Mobile or Cable area

Latency typically x4 to x20 better on Cable than Mobile

lm7

I have had o2 broadband. I have had clearwire broadband. I have had irish broadband. all crap. I have a son who works in tech support for vodafone broadband he told vodafone its all a load of crap. if you can get fixed line the only way. you are paying for ****e any other way. the **** i was told when ringing up to complain. vodafone look for 100 euro up front so if there is a problem you are ****ed. they sent my aunt to the local store to get a replacement modem while hers was being fixed. they said they dont give them out. she was out of service for nearly a month but the bank payment was still swiftly taken out. would never touch one again. maybe in 20 years time when they have there **** toghther.