I’ve been using one of Three’s USB wireless dongles this week.
It’s an E220 modem; the same one that most of the other phone companies are using.
Conclution; it’s a nice piece of kit which is going to be very useful.
At 15 Pounds a month it’s comparable to a wired connection but without the hassle and day off work involved in getting a phone line connected.
Pros.
- It works out of box; it doesn’t take days to get it activated on the network.
- It seems to have pretty good coverage.
- It works on a Mac and the PDF explaining how to set it up was correct.
- It has a pretty light which changes colours.
- It works on the train! You just can’t put a value on that.
Technical Cons.
- Initial connections and DNS lookups are rubbish.
It takes several seconds for DNS queries to complete. New ssh connections take about 5 seconds to come up.
- It’s NATed. You don’t seem to get a real IP number and you can’t make inbound connections.
- It dropped ssh connections like they were going out of fashion. This was becoming a real issue until I realised why it was happening; you’re behind a really agressive NAT gateway which is timing out your connections as fast as it can. You just need to set an ssh keep alive.
- There seems to be a transparent http proxy involved. You can’t access an http svn repository from this connection. Solution; use an https repository.
Three just been silly Cons.
- The Mac instructions say use the Mac driver CD included but the Three stores don’t have any of them to give out.
- The driver download link on the Three website is broken.
You have to google for E220 drivers and then follow the Three instruction sheet.
- To get to your data usage page you need to register online using you SIM number (fine) and your Three phone number. Abit of a problem there as you haven’t got a phone number because you didn’t actually buy a phone. I’m not sure what the resolution to this is yet.
Extra for experts
The modem comes with a SIM card; does anyone know what happens if you put this card into a phone?
Can you make calls; can you use the phone as a bluetooth modem?