Do I need mobile broadband?
I have recently been looking at mobile broadband packages available in the UK – USB sticks with a 3g connection and a heavy data restriction – starting at 3gig/month. Most of these contracts require you to sign up for 12, 18 or even 24 months to get a decent deal.There are a number of sites to ‘help’ you compare deals available and choose [/spend your cash] – I mainly looked at http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/ and http://mobile.broadbandgenie.co.uk/ – I found them all to be much the same really
One question I have here is, just how different will available services be in 2 years’ time? I am certainly hesitant to sign up for a 24 month contract. Starting at about £15/month, this is also not a particularly cheap ‘punt’.
Another question I have asked myself is, how much will I really use mobile broadband? I mean, I have wifi at home, at work, at most of my friends’ houses, and I can usually find free wifi of sorts in town, even if it involves buying a coffee. When I’m not in any of these places, I’m usually walking/skating/riding somewhere – I don’t need to be online 60/60/24/7/52/365 – not at the moment anyway.
The only time I really notice a hankering for the internet regularly is when I travel by train. The train station is rubbish for free wifi, the establishments that supposedly offer the service can’t help when it doesn’t work, and options with The Cloud or T Mobile are wayy too expensive for me! I have been on a train from Leeds – London that had free wifi onboard which, despite being a little sketchy in places (as to be expected) was a godsend – I was amazed when I found it.
One possible solution I’ve come up with is using my n95 as a bluetooth modem with my Macbook. I have searched and searched for a decent data plan with my current carrier Orange UK and it doesn’t really look like a viable replacement for mobile broadband, as the speeds are dismal (~0.3 mbps when I tested) and the cost of data is high. However, if I don’t need to use the service much, it should be fine for emergencies. Apparently, I can ring Orange CS and arrange for a capped fee of £1 for 30mb of data in a day. That should cover emergency emails / web browsing for train times/maps/vital info searching, which is really all I need mobile interwebs for now.
So, to conclude, I couldn’t really justify the luxury of mobile broadband yet. I’m going to see how my n95 setup serves me, and wait for prices to come down / my income to go up / UK wide free wifi to be installed! 
My mobile contract is also due for renewal soon, finding one with unlimited data could well be the way forward.
s
Web