Steering clear of 3’s mobile broadband
Friday, August 24th, 2007I have Eircom’s 1mb broadband package at home, and it’s been driving me absolutely mad recently. The connection is so unreliable, that trying to spend a chunk of hours working from home is pretty much impossible. I haven’t even bothered calling Eircom about the problem, because I know what the problem is. Our house is too far from the local exchange, resulting in what they call a long line issue. This means the signal is very week by the time it reaches us, and we therefore get cut off whenever there’s a heavy load on the line.
I worked at AOL broadband technical support for a while, and this was a common problem for rural customers. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution. The only thing the ISP can really do is try get the line upgraded, but I’m sure there’s a lot of expense in that and it probably isn’t worth their while doing it just to satisfy a handful of nagging customers.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to work on a project this week, and the Eircom connection here has been about as reliable as the weather forecast. It got so infuriating that this morning I decided to look into this mobile broadband that companies like 3, Vodaphone and 02 have been shoving down our throats with recent advertising campaigns. At first glance, 3 appears to be the fastest and cheapest mobile broadband provider, offering speeds of up to 3.6Mbps for just €19.99 per month. I went in to the 3 store here in Waterford and spoke with a very helpful sales rep, who gave me a bunch of info about the package. The interesting stuff…
- The modem costs €129.
- It is possible to hook the modem into a router or hub and do the whole home networking thing so you can connect to their network on multiple computers at the same time. However, 3 does not provide support for this, so you have to figure it out yourself.
- There is coverage for the service in my neck of the woods. (You can actually check your local coverage on 3’s website.)
- You must sign a 12-month contract.
- There is a 14-day money-back guarantee.
That all seemed reasonable enough, and I would have taken the plunge then and there except they didn’t have any modems currently in stock. No worries, I’d call back later.
In the meantime, I’ve been online with my shitty Eircom connection (which has dropped a half dozen times as I’m writing this) and done a little research on 3’s mobile broadband. The reviews from here and here caused me to reconsider availing of the service. The key complaints…
- SMTP is not supported. Fucking genius.
- Problems accessing secure sites. For example, Gmail, which I usually have open whenever I’m online, is supposed to be completely inaccessible on 3’s broadband network. Not good.
- No FTP, which might cause a slight problem when you have clients waiting for websites to be launched.
- Very inconsistent speeds, and average speeds seem to be closer to 1Mbps than the advertised 3.6Mbps.
- Numerous compatibility issues with the modem. It seems that McAfee, Napster, Cyberlink and a bunch of other software can cause the modem to
explodedrop frequently. 3’s technical support apparently recommend that you uninstall everything on your PC apart from the operating system to ensure the least amount of conflict. - Friendly, but not very helpful technical support.
So I’ve decided that trading one infuriating broadband connection for another may not be the best course of action. If anybody actually reads this and can recommend a good broadband provider for rural customers at a reasonable price, let me know.