O2 Wireless Router Globesurfer III

kg85

Hi Just wondering if anyone has bought one of these O2 Globesurfer Wireless Routers which came onto the market recently.

I live in North Meath where there is no possibility of any type of DSL broadband as eircoms exchanges have not been upgraded and there is no plan to do so anytime soon. I currently use a Vodafone 3G Mobile Broadband unit for medium levels of surfing and logging into my office VPN network when working at home. I have found this to give me reasonable speed for my needs to date.

My daughter and wife occasionally use the family pc, but can only get access to the internet when I come home with the Vodafone unit. I am thinking of going with the O2 unit, but I would like to know how other people have got on with it, particularly how it performs when sharing with one or more PC's at the same time.

Any advice would be appreciated.

jor el

The modem/router itself often has little or no impact on performance. 3G being what it is will be the dominant factor in whether it works or not. If there's an O2 3G signal in your area, and it's not heavily congested, then it should work. If not, then the modem will make no difference.

O2 give a 72 hour free trial, using a standard plug in modem, which you could use to check it out. If that works, then buy the router modem. If it doesn't, you'll be wasting your time.

O2_Daryll

I would agree with Jor el. It is vitally important that check out if you have a good stable connection in your area before you buy the router other wise you will only be wasting your money.

One good thing about the router though is that if you have poor signal in the sitting room and good signal in the kitchen you can leave the router in the kitchen and it will push the 3G signal to your computer.

Honda08

kg85 wrote: »

Hi Just wondering if anyone has bought one of these O2 Globesurfer Wireless Routers which came onto the market recently.

I live in North Meath where there is no possibility of any type of DSL broadband as eircoms exchanges have not been upgraded and there is no plan to do so anytime soon. I currently use a Vodafone 3G Mobile Broadband unit for medium levels of surfing and logging into my office VPN network when working at home. I have found this to give me reasonable speed for my needs to date.

My daughter and wife occasionally use the family pc, but can only get access to the internet when I come home with the Vodafone unit. I am thinking of going with the O2 unit, but I would like to know how other people have got on with it, particularly how it performs when sharing with one or more PC's at the same time.

Any advice would be appreciated.

op bear in mind that o2 have / are blocking some genuine sites, from time to time. eg megavideo etc etc, bear this in mind when choosing.

Ozzie

Just set it up yesterday and its working great. Had the standard o2 plug in modem for a couple of years and was fairly ok, but this is working a bit faster if anything. Its sending the signal throughut the house and we were concerned about that due to a concrete floor upstairs and block walls throughout. So I have to give it 10 out of 10 so far!

(And no I've nothing to do with o2)

The Big Gig

Anyone know where i might get an aerial for this unit? One of my colleagues opened it and threw the box out without putting the aerial on it!

JodTT

I've taken a trial on this router from yesterday and tried it out in the house in Co Wicklow last night. Although pages seem to be loading well (I checked it on Facebook, Yahoo email and Boards), the router itself is only giving a signal of 1-2 bars.

I'm going to put it through its paces tonight and see how it fairs watching videos on Youtube, but I was wondering what people think of a maximum signal strength of just two bars?

Am I lining myself up for future disappointment/frustrations if I decide to sign up to the 18 month contract with such poor signal strength?

O2_Daryll

2 bars of signal with HSPA is 10 times better than 5 with EDGE. I'd say it will perform well for you but if you want to increase the signal change the location to different parts of the house to see if it will improve.

JodTT

That's good to hear, Daryll. Thanks for your response.

I'm going to do a few tests at different points in the house tonight and see if I can improve the 2 bars! Fingers crossed!

Honda08

Talk2O2: Daryll wrote: »

2 bars of signal with HSPA is 10 times better than 5 with EDGE. I'd say it will perform well for you but if you want to increase the signal change the location to different parts of the house to see if it will improve.

i had one of these routers and to be honest the sierra wireless compass 888 performed much better.
the wifi on the globesurfer kept dropping out for some reason every so often
sent it back in the end.. good idea, but the router seemed very slow to boot and didnt get any better signal over the compass 888 modem!

jd007

How much are the globesurfers?

JodTT

I signed up with 02 today for the Globesurfer on an 18 month contract. The router was €89 as part of the contract and I was told my monthly charges will be €16.99, as opposed to the advertised €19.90 as I'm already an 02 customer, which I was delighted about.

I specifically wanted a wireless router that could be used with systems other than my laptop, like my iPhone, Wii and PS3.

As promised I put it through it paces over the weekend and although the signal strength was only ever at 2 out of 5 bars, the internet worked very well, even with Youtube videos. I did a number of speedtests too, the best being 2.5MBs although the average was around the 1MB mark. That's sufficient enough for me at that price!

Seanbts

Hi All,

Got one of these today, I want to use it in the car, is there a Cigratte lighter connection for this unit? Need to try and source one in Ireland.

Cheers

dsludds

GLobesurfer III have a lot of problems, it is not worthed to invest any money unless you can live with the below;

- Most of the times when the connection is dropped it does not renew itself. I believe this is a known fault and you need to reboot it.

- It is a known problem that it does damage SIM cards regularly (especially when you reboot so often to fix the above problem), this problem is confirmed by O2 help desk. I am told hardware manufacturer is working on it, and I should get 4-5 blank SIM cards from an O2 shop as spares. I am on my 3rd SIM card in 2 months.

- Limited support from O2. It looks like O2 team is not technically sufficient to support globesurfer yet, hope this will be resolved in time, but right now, they seem to be clueless. Smallest problems take days to resolve, I have a problem open for 2 months with no resolution (the first problem above, they can not identify the problem, they do not offer any solutions)

- If you run into problems that they can not solve, you can cancel the service right?? Not really, I was told I would be charged for the rest of the contract commitment (this is with comreg now).

JodTT

I can't believe they can sell these Globesurfers with this problem and what looks like a limited solution. I mean to tell you to collect spare SIM cards from an 02 store is ludicrous!

I am now on my second Globesurfer (the first was returned and replaced within 3 weeks of purchase). The wireless element constantly drops and we now seem to spend as much time connecting the Globesurfer through the ethernet wire as we do using it wirelessly. If I had wanted to connect my laptop to the internet using a wire, I would have gone for the free dongle!

At this stage, I just want my money back for the Globesurfer. I'm happy enough to continue the contract with one of the normal 02 USB dongles (I'll work out the wireless end by buying an Edimax router), but this just isn't good enough to charge a premium price of €89 for something that clearly can't do the job it's supposed to.

dsludds

JodTT, here is what I did and I recommend anyone having a globesurfer problem to do the same otherwise O2 seems to be very reluctant to solve any issue or admit any problem.
Log an official complaint to O2 complaints department, they don't really do much other than saying how sorry they are etc but you will need the complaint ID. Their email is ironically Customer.First@o2.com

With the complaint ID, contact ComReg ; http://www.askcomreg.ie/about_us/form.asp

Goodluck

JodTT

Thanks for that dsludds. I have a post on the 02 forum at the minute. I'm going to give them a couple of days to respond properly (so far all I've been told to do is try resetting the device which I've confirmed doesn't work) and if I don't get anywhere then I'll definitely be posting a complaint.

I'm getting so weary of these kinds of issues with phone companies.....

O2_Daryll

Is this the one I was looking at for you earlier? Did you get my reply?

JodTT

Talk2O2: Daryll wrote: »

Is this the one I was looking at for you earlier? Did you get my reply?

It is indeed, Daryll. I replied to you over on the 02 forums last night and was going to pop back in today.

I changed those settings and last night it continued to work. I'm going to give it another day or two as it does have a habit of working for a while and then stopping for no reason again.

I'll keep you updated!

dodohert

Check this out..there's a 3G wireless router available form a company in based in Shannon for 39.99 I bought one for my 02 3G USB dongle and it works great.


http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055936013

Link to company page.

http://www.irishwireless.eu/shop/item.aspx?itemid=342

mrbig

I agree with Dsluds this globesurfer unit is rubbish, I have had it for six months and it constanly needs rebooting.
(I had used the dovado unit previously) I have put up with it this long because I had put it in my attic for max signal( this part was a great success , it got a big boost from this)
I am going up to the attic now to swap it out with the dovado.


the speedtest.net ping test is a great help when trying to optimise the unit with the jitter giving a good indication of electrical interference.

Fulkrum

dsludds wrote: »

GLobesurfer III have a lot of problems, it is not worthed to invest any money unless you can live with the below;

- Most of the times when the connection is dropped it does not renew itself. I believe this is a known fault and you need to reboot it.

- It is a known problem that it does damage SIM cards regularly (especially when you reboot so often to fix the above problem), this problem is confirmed by O2 help desk. I am told hardware manufacturer is working on it, and I should get 4-5 blank SIM cards from an O2 shop as spares. I am on my 3rd SIM card in 2 months.

- Limited support from O2. It looks like O2 team is not technically sufficient to support globesurfer yet, hope this will be resolved in time, but right now, they seem to be clueless. Smallest problems take days to resolve, I have a problem open for 2 months with no resolution (the first problem above, they can not identify the problem, they do not offer any solutions)

- If you run into problems that they can not solve, you can cancel the service right?? Not really, I was told I would be charged for the rest of the contract commitment (this is with comreg now).

Hi

Some facts for you. If the Globesurfer drops a connection it will be because the service has dropped. The Globesurfer will fall back onto EDGE to hold the connection. If the service drops out completely then it cant do anything about that. There is no known issue along these lines. In fact there are no known issues with the Globesurfer to date. Its a very mature and stable product and sold globally.

The Globesurfer does not damage sim cards. The fault lies with the sim cards and O2 are fixing this problem. The manufacturer in question being Gemalto. This fault is also appearing now with USB modems and handsets. Its just it first came to light with the Globesurfer. It has nothing to do with the Globesurfer and the guy in Limrick on the Helpdesk who told you so shouldnt have told you this. Just as he lied about this being a known issue regarding the connection dropping. BTW, I have to reset my ADSL router several times a week. My Globesurfer in my caravan doesnt drop at all so maybe Im just lucky.

So irrespective of what supposedly damages sim cards its the sim in question and you should raise this immediately with the shop that activated you. If you switch from a Globesurfer to a Hotshot you will still encounter the same problems.

Medceltic

anyone have it for sale this Router ??
I need to unlock it for Meteor....
any chance ???
it is good for internet Receiver.

Tomk1

Ooops dead thread walking