Mobile Broadband Router Available Now!

Three have now released their mobile broadband router for sale.

Click here for more details.

And for more information about using Mobile Broadband with a Router, click here.

Mobile Broadband Starter Kits

Three have released some Mobile Broadband Starter Kits, these come with a USB Modem, SIM card, and data allowance preloaded on the SIM card.

The cost of these Mobile Broadband Starter Kits ranges from £69.99 for a kit with 3GB to £279.99 for 24GB. Now, these data allowances do have a time limit, but they are not the 30 days of the standard add ons. You have 3 months to use the 3GB allowance to 24 month to use the 24GB allowance.

For more details on these Mobile Broadband Starter Kits, click here.

For more information on the latest offers from Three, click here.

Mobile Broadband Router

Three are soon to release their Mobile Broadband Router. The D100 Router is a device which will allow you to connect up to 4 Wi-Fi enabled devices to the internet using one Mobile Broadband Dongle.

For more information on using Mobile Broadband with a Router visit:

http://mobiledatauk.blogspot.com/2008/10/increase-potential-of-your-mobile.html

I will update with a release date when I find out when it is, or keep an eye on the Three website here.

For more information on offers from Three, click here.

Octobers offers from Orange

I have decided to move network specific information to separate dedicated blogs where possible. The first is for Orange. To view the latest offers from Orange visit this blogs sister blog:

http://orange-network.blogspot.com/

Mobile networks to boost data capacity

One of my concerns about Mobile Broadband has been due to it's huge increase in popularity in the last year. I was worried that with such a large number of people using the mobile network for their internet that it would become clogged and render the service unusable due to slow speeds where so many people were downloading or uploading data at the same time. Fortunately, it looks like most of the networks are planning for this eventuality and have signed an agreement with BT which will increase the amount of data that can be transmitted across their networks at any one time. It would appear the only network among the UK Big 5 at the moment to have not done this is Orange.

More information on this can be found on the Financial Times website:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/12523d06-92f5-11dd-98b5-0000779fd18c.html

Increase the potential of your Mobile Broadband by adding a Wireless Router

If you have a wireless router then you can connect multiple devices to your Mobile Broadband connection. This applies to any Wi-Fi enabled device, which in my home includes Laptop, Mobile Phone, Nintendo DS, and a Nintendo Wii. There are a two main ways of doing this, either you can get a Wireless Router which has Mobile Broadband built-in, or that you can connect your Mobile Broadband device to. Or, you can set-up a home network and allow other devices on the network to connect through your computer which has the device attached.

I know Vodafone has had a wireless router with included Mobile Broadband for a few years now but it has always been very expensive and only available to business users. For the Consumer market I have heard that T-Mobile and Three both have plans to release these but will most likely be locked to their own networks.

For those wanting to try a standard wireless router, here are some links to guides to get these working.

For Windows users I recommend this guide from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306126

For Linux users I recommend this detailed HOWTO:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/IP-Masquerade-HOWTO/index.html

or this shorter HOWTO:

http://www.howtoforge.com/internet-connection-sharing-masquerading-on-linux

And for Mac users, this guide from Apple:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8156.html

For those of you who do not have a Wireless Router at the moment, they can be purchased online at the following places among others:

The Carphone Warehouse
Euroffice
ASDA

Mobile Broadband Alliance

The big news for Mobile Broadband at the moment seems to be the decision by a group of 16 companies to form the Mobile Broadband Alliance (or Mobile Broadband Initiative, reports differ) and put one billion dollars in to promoting this. Which is going to include a brand new Mobile Broadband sticker to be stuck on new computers. The first of these are to be rolled out in time for christmas apparently. But for those of you who don't want to wait until christmas, you can get a Laptop with Mobile Broadband built-in with Orange now, unfortunately it will not include that new sticker.