MiFi questions. Web cube or other?

[DowntonSprouts]

I'm beyond the realms of my limited tech knowledge here.

I'm moving but am unable to get phone line and broadband connected until the 21st.

I have iPhone and iPad (wifi not 3G)

I have read about these mifi boxes which you just plug in and think they use 3G signal so you can create your own wifi hotspot- is that right?

Would I be able to use my iPad with this over wifi? If I buy one and subscribe to the PaYG rolling monthly contract and use it for 1 month is that all I need to do?are there suitable alternatives to the 3 web cube and is the signal you get from them good enough to do general web surfing with the iPad?

The short answer is yes. But since you have an iphone, can you not just use that for a bit? Seems a lot of money to spend just to be able to surf the net on your ipad?

The other option is to use your iphone as a portable hotspot but you will incur extra charges from your mobile phone provider since it won't be included in your monthly allowance. It's worth a call to your provider before you commit the money.

how reliable is it to use your iPhone as a personal hotspot? Is it dependant on signal strength where you are and am I likely to keep losing it?

I really need to be able to do things that are too fiddly to use my iPhone for. It's ok for picking up emails and stuff but the screen size isn't big enough for more complex things.

I know it seems like a lot of fuss for three weeks but without going into detail I am going to be really struggling without proper Internet access. I may be housebound and so unable to get out to anywhere with wifi.

Guess I should have gone for the iPad with 3G!

Using your iphone as a hotspot is exactly the same thing as using the mifi. In effect your iphone is the mifi.

If you are going to be using the ipad a lot then maybe the mifi is a good investment. For a bit of ad-hoc surfing then maybe not.

Ok thanks very much for the info.

Found a half price offer on O2 , my mobile provider, for a pocket hotspot loaded with 2gb.

£37.50 and no contract, just buy more gb as and when. Think the 2gb will see me through til 21st but also have 750mb on my phone contract which I can also use for tethering as back up.

Thanks again for explaining and pointing me in the right direction.

Wow £37.50 for 2GB? That's outrageously expensive. Bear in mind that most networks will charge about £5 for 500MB. You are much better off using your iPhone for tethering.

But that was for the Mobile broad band device thingy and included the 2gb. It is a pay as you go pocket wifi that you can tether up to 5 devices. So anyone visiting can use it too.

DD will be able to use it after I have finished with it as she doesn't have a phone and she doesnt have 3g on her ipad. The price for 1gb top up is about what you said with double allowance every third top up.

Every other mobile broad band device I looked at was more expensive just for the device. You don't have to plug it in either, so you can take it out and about.

I didn't think that was bad and am really just relieved to have found a solution.

That sounds fine to me, for 2 GB and the unit (which you could have later sold on Ebay).

I bought a router from Three for about the same cost which didn't itself connect to the mobile network (it needed a USB dongle to be plugged in, which I had, but would have had to be bought at extra cost otherwise). On checking I see that Three only sold the ZTE MF10 for a few months and it's only on their support pages now...

If you didn't have a use for yours (ie your daughter using it later on) I could have loaned you my kit, and you'd have only needed to spend 10-15 quid for a SIM card for Three if your postcode had coverage (people on Ebay seem to sell the 3 GB/3 months SIMs for that sort of price... so it might be worth looking on Ebay etc for cheap O2 SIMs loaded with data).

I had 15 GB/month for about 8 quid/month from Three from October 2008 to Sept 2012, but that was only that low a cost because they had a half-price deal on until the end of Sept 2008, and now costs 15.99 a month. With the plans for fibre coming to my area at the end of September, I didn't want to go onto a further 24 month contract to keep the low price, but there being sod's law, having cancelled the Three contract, fibre in my area has been delayed until at least March 2013...

I didn't spot the Web Cube being announced on the Three blog but see it has quite varied comments so in the end it looks to be lucky you avoided it, even if you are in an area they serve (started off in just three cities, don't know if it is supported nationally now).

Also worth a mention, as it is O2, is that GiffGaff (which is a virtual network, that piggybacks on O2, just like Tesco) has deals for either fixed amounts of data or for unlimited data. However they are aimed at users of mobile phones, so not sure if one of their SIMS would work in this O2 device.

However, it might mean that GiffGaff would be an alternative to having an O2 contract, if they had a package (minutes/ text/ data) that works out cheaper than O2. NB I have not (yet) used GiffGaff - when my SIM only contract with Three expires in a few months I will look into trying out other networks.

"you will incur extra charges from your mobile phone provider since it won't be included in your monthly allowance" - surely that depends on the contract. It wasn't clear at that point which network the OP used, but rather than saying 'will', a simple 'may' could be used :)

Virgin Mobile seems to be OK with tethering. Three does not permit it (except on their 'One Plan' at 25 quid/month [though it seems to work fine on my mobile on a different contract]), while GiffGaff have 'goodybag's allowing tethering, but apparently (just went and checked) they won't work on the iPhone.

Thanks for all that.

I'll be in central London and unbelievably, to me, there is no cable or fibre optic broadband. I was amazed that I had to wait nearly 4 weeks for an open reach engineer to come out for the phone line/ broadband. Even though I know there is a phone line and that the previous tenants had a wifi router in the flat. Apparently they can't just test the line and allocate me a number even though it's already there and working.

Anyway. The portable hotspot device has been delivered so I may be back asking questions if I can't get it set up properly!

There have been some lengthy delays in many areas for months now, in part because of the flooding. My ISP (PlusNet) 'forwards' many of the Openreach service announcements, and there is a category 'MBORC' (Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control) which has been doing overtime.

An announcement from May

PS I think there are still a dozen 'not spots' where no broadband is available, and amazingly at least one of the dozen locations was in Greater London, though I do not recall exactly where.

BT has been advertising Fibre for 18 if not 30 months, but I suspect many of the areas which got it were locations in easy commuting distance to big cities, where Sky, Virgin Media, and BE Unlimited/O2 or Orange had been active, and I think Openreach were looking for (possibly wealthier) households who could be served by fibre and kept out of the clutches (or tempted away from) the competition, when 'up to 40 Mbps' was a more attractive offer than 'up to 24 Mbps'. Some people are unwilling to budge from names they know like British Gas, the bank that they and their parents have used for all their adult life, and BT, so having a faster service than 'up to 8 Mbps' was all the more important!

(Also, when they did put it into Cardiff, the number of customers switching was so low that there was some press release about disappointing uptake - they presumably forgot that people may be happy with what they had, or locked into a long contract because of VM's Tivo box, or similar.)