Get your dongle out...

Mobile Broadband. Anytime, anywhere.

Its the latest craze, isn't it? People can now plug in a USB Broadband dongle and surf the net wherever they are in the country with a laptop. Sounds like a great idea though doesn't it?

Many companies are offering this mobile broadband service to their customers. It isn't cheap though. You could expect to get the lowest quality mobile broadband package for around £20 a month.

It doesn't sound too bad, but when my family pay £14 per month for a good phone and broadband package with Talk Talk, it does sound a bit extortionate. Saying that however, it has proven popular, and it has proven to be a good business focus for many companies such as O2, T-Mobile, Sky and Orange.

By the way, you can pat yourself on the back if you noticed that 3 out of 4 companies just mentioned are mobile phone companies, and also if you noticed that they are all telecommunications companies.

Moving on, I can see why they seem like such a great idea and how they allow you more freedom with your roaming, but are they really what they are cracked up to be? I was going to sign up for it myself, so I had a good look at what is on offer. I have even used it on a friends laptop before.

For starters, you don't get unlimited downloads. This means that when you have downloaded over a certain limit, usually about 8 Gigabytes (Gb) of data, you cannot download any more data. Well, that's the idea anyway. In recent news however, it has been found that anyone who exceeds the download limit by just 1Gb then you are landed with a tasty fine.

The following outlines the additional fines if you exceed your download limit by 1Gb on some networks who offer the mobile broadband service:

1. O2 = £200
2. Three = over £100
3. Vodafone = £15
4. Virgin = £14.95
5. Orange = £14.95
6. T-Mobile = Free

Yes, I can confirm that T-Mobile (holy noise) does not charge you if you exceed your download limit! Instead of fining you and making you hate them, they advise you to change your mobile broadband tariff in order to get the best deal for you, and the deal that is more relevant to your on-the-go broadband needs. Pretty good I think!

Let's clear one thing up though. The download limit includes any information downloaded to your computer from any website you visit, including cookies. This is on top of any music you may download, any videos, games, programmes...you get the gist.

I most certainly do not agree with O2 and Three fining customers if they exceed the download limit, at that price anyway. At least with Orange and the other two companies, it isn't such a hefty and ridiculous charge.

All in all though, if I had mobile broadband and was asked to pay any fine for exceeding a limit of some kind, I would rather puke in their faces than cough up my money.

To add to it all, I hate Three anyway as a company. They try to add costs wherever they can in order to legally scam their customers into giving them lots of money. Bastards. Burn their headquarters down I say!