Huawei E169G USB Broadband modem. Can WiFi Hotspot Providers Survive
Last week I received my latest phone bill from 3UK. Inside was a promotional flyer advertising a free USB broadband dongle with half price monthly fee for existing customers. Up until now I had been using my N95-8GB and bluetooth tethering it to my laptop for Internet access, but for half price this was an offer I couldn’t turn down.
There are 3 price plans to choose from, 1GB per month for £10 £5, 3GB for £15 £7.50 or 7GB for £25 £12.50. Currently I had a 1GB broadband lite plan with my phones contract, this cost £10 per month, I could drop that down to x-series silver for £5 which would still give me internet on my mobile and take out a 3GB plan with a free broadband dongle for the promotional price of £7.50 per month, thus only costing me an extra £2.50 for a whole lot more and a USB broadband dongle. See what I meant when I said it’s an offer I just couldn’t turn down.
So on Saturday I went to the 3 store and picked up a Huawei E169G USB modem. The software installation was simple, it pre configured the IAP so no settings to enter. The only problem I did have was that the first time I tried it I got an error 619 message. A quick call to customer services and they got it sorted, it turns out the sim card hadn’t been properly activated in store. After that I was up and running and I must say it works really well, I haven’t done any speed tests but it does appear to be quicker than when I was connecting with my phone via bluetooth.
I do wonder what will happen to WiFi providers like The Cloud as these devices and plans become cheaper and more popular. Currently in the UK The Cloud charge £9.99 per month for unlimited access, they have thousands of hotspots, but outside major cities they are few and far between. For example my local town center has 5 cloud hotspots, not exactly blanket coverage. As most people use hotspots for sending/receiving email and a bit if time in a browser reading the news and RSS feeds it isn’t very data intensive, they probably use less than 1GB per month. So even without the promotion they could have broadband where ever they go for the same price as a monthly cloud subscription and not be restricted to finding a hotspot. Companies like The Cloud are seriously going to have to change their prices, offer special deals or some other intensive if they don’t want to go out of business within the next few years.
I’ve had a 3 dongle for a few years now (and am just switching to the latest one) which s used on a Samsung laptop and an Acer Netbook. Both my wife and I could use our phones as modems but have never needed to as the dongle has (in East Kent where we live or central London where we regularly visit) only let us down, briefly, once and that was because I parked right next to a massive Oak tree that blocked the signal (but it was big enough to have probably also protected us from a crashing Jumbo jet).
Hi Dave
They are great aren’t they, and great story, the bit about the jumbo made me laugh :-)
I’ve since moved to one of the MiFi devices so I can also use it with my iPad etc. Can’t remember how I ever used to cope without having mobile broadband.
when you open a wifi hotspot you need to make sure you keep a log of all conectionns. A Wifi Hotspot management system is the only feasable way to do this