Increase the potential of your Mobile Broadband by partnering it with Wi-fi

Some Mobile Broadband services are coming complete with Wi-fi hotspot access. The two main networks for this offer are T-Mobile and O2. So, when you have Mobile Broadband, why would you want to use Hotspots as well? As great as Mobile Broadband is, it is not yet the most reliable of ways to connect to the internet, when the mobile telephone network in your area has gone down, or you just have a poor signal you may be able to connect to a Hotspot to get high speed access again. Another benefit to partnering your connection with Wi-fi Hotspots is that depending on how much you use the internet and what your allowance or fair usage policy is like, you could benefit from the extra allowance that the Hotspot can provide. So, with T-Mobile and O2 offering Wi-fi as part of their packages and an increasing number of places offering free Wi-fi you can't really go wrong. Whether you use it as a back-up when you network doesn't work, as a speed boost when your network connection is slow, or as a way of getting more data usage. Also as mentioned in a previous post O2 is currently offering free home broadband with their mobile broadband, so you can have Mobile broadband, Home broadband, and Wi-fi access all for a single price of £20.00 per month.

Mobile Broadband on Linux!

I've just found this blogpost and this which gives some brief details on setting up Linux for Mobile Broadband. The software used is a device driver for a Vodafone Mobile Connect Card but the author of the post has got it to work with a 3 Ireland SIM in the UK. So, the software should definitely work with Vodafone's service and apparently with a little tweaking other networks as well.

For more information on the software:
http://www.betavine.net/bvportal/web/linux_drivers