Review 3 mobile broadband pay as you go

Part 1

So I drove into Newcastle this morning and decided to call into Starbucks to test out the new Three USB mobile broadband modem. I plugged it in and have to say I was impressed, the drivers and launcher software are already stored within the modem and installed themselves without any need for me to do anything.

I clicked on connect and under 10 seconds I was connected and had what three call a Turbo connection which is actually an HSDPA 3.6mb/s connection.

The next part unfortunately is where it all goes downhill for me. As this is a brand new pay as you go modem I had to go to three’s website and buy a prepaid credit, if you don’t do this you can only access threes site and go no further than that.

Great I thought so credit card at the ready I clicked buy now and waited, and waited, oh and waited and bit more and nothing happened, after a while, I get “this web page cannot be displayed”, so I repeated the process three times and each time the same outcome. So there you have it, part one and its not too good so far. I will be calling Three tonight to find out why it didn’t work and hopefully soon I can give you some information on speeds and reliability of the service.

Part 2

If you remember where we finished off Part 1, it was all a bit of a let down as I couldn’t purchase any credit to test the modem out as Three’s site was down, if you don’t remember please check out Part 1 of the review here.

Anyway this time I plugged the modem into the USB port, the software automatically started up, I hit connect and boom straight onto the Three HSDPA network. I logged into my Three account and bought a pre-paid credit of 1 Gig of data for £10.00.

Simply top-up by £10 to receive 1GB of Data, £15 to receive 3GB and £25 to receive 7GB each top up lasts for 30 days, not monthly as some carriers offer and if you run out of credit you just top up again, no high costs per mb when you have used your allowance.

I visited a few websites and the speed was excellent without any delays it was actually better than my ADSL connection at home, but that’s not too hard as I live out of the city and my connection is unreliable at best.

I decided to carry out a speed tests and below are the average results after three tests.

So far I am very happy with the performance of the modem and provider, I use software in my day to day job that requires a fair amount of bandwidth and it works without a hitch either at a customers office preparing quotations or over a coffee surfing the web.

Three mobile broadband gets a big thumbs up if you want to use it in city centres and surrounding areas added to that there is no monthly commitment, however one word of caution, in rural parts of the country coverage it is patchy at best so check with Three before you commit to buy.

Disclaimer: The modem and pre-pay credit was purchased by the writer of the review.