Addendum

I cancelled my Datacard subscription and it runs out very soon. However I did check out reception in the place I am now living (outskirts of Headington, Oxford). Not a sausage - not even GPRS. That also tells me that I shouldn't get an Orange mobile either

The End

I've just finished my job up here in Manchester. I do have a new job (and a permanent one rather than a contract) to go to in January. I think I will have somewhere to live when I get there and I should be able to get Broadband within 2 weeks. After that I don't really have the need for my 3G card.

I could select the lowest tariff (7 Mb per month) for £10. But even that seems too much for the very occasional use. I did once stop the car and booted up the laptop to find a map of where I was going - but apart from that I don't see I would ever use it.

I originally bought the card because I was spending 4 nights a week in hotels and needed internet access. Later on I had nowhere to live and was staying with family while looking for work (mainly through Inernet job sites - I was a contract programmer). I needed almost constant access to check for new jobs and send CVs off. I remember the frustration of having days when I couldn't log into my Yahoo email. More frustration came from the fact that most of the places I stayed had poor GPRS reception let alone 3G. Orange did finally sort out the Yahoo/MSN/FTP problems but by that time I had a place to live and Broadband!

I wonder if I can sell the card on ebay?

Mobile Phone Coverage Problems

On Saturday night I was reminded of one of the big problems not just with 3G coverage but the mobile phone network coverage. I was staying where I used to live until February this year and the Broadband connection wasn't working. I tried logging in to Orange using the laptop but I couldn't get a connection - not even GPRS. There are blank spots like this all over the country.

I wish I could say that there was an easy solution (e.g. move from Orange), but I remember the problems I had with my Vodaphone mobile while living there and looking for work - agencies would call me asking if I was available and I would stoop down to get a pen, and lose the connection!. I used to have to take calls in the Hall standing up, because that was the most likely place to be able to actually finish the call.

If you live near a motorway service area, you should be ok. My regular commenter, Sue, is travelling the waterways of England, so she must be rally frustrated at the gaps in coverage.

The Bad Old Days

A reminder tonight of how things used to be. I have been trying to ftp a website update having just written a review of a new band. I only need to update two pages but on the first I get an error and end up with a file that's only 511 bytes (e.g. incomplete and unviewable). This is the same problem that dogged Orange for almost a year - any upload over 2k causes problems. Since I got a landline I rarely use the 3G Data Card for ftp so I haven't really tested the connection recently.

I can however log into Yahoo and MSN so things are better that they used to be. I'm just glad that I chose to update one particular page first rather than the index page of the site - I could have been left with a screwed wbsite otherwise.

New 3G Data Card

I read in The Register that Orange now have a new Datacard and it is no longer the Merlin hardware but they've switched over to the same Option card used by Vodaphone. It's a much improved review from the one a year ago. Aprt from the aerial that now comes with it you also get wireless! Read the at Orange 3g Datacard.

Question now is can all of us current subscribers have one please?

Onspeed

I have been singing the praises of Onspeed for a while now and I really appreciate the money it saves me. However, they did an update of the client software about a month ago that didn't work for me. Stopping the software took an age - and I needed to do that every time I started the 3G connection because Onspeed didn't pick up the fact that I was already connected through Orange. I quickly uninstalled the update and went back to the old version.

So my recommendation has to be withdrawn for the moment.

Orange 3G Data Card - A Summary

Well, I now just use the Orange 3G Card at weekends. I now have somewhere to live with broadband so I just use it on Saturday nights when I am away. I'm about to cut my bandwidth down to 60 MB a month. Time to summarise.

The problems I experienced earlier seem to have been solved. My yahoo email and ftp has worked consistently for at least two months or more. I don't know if they are still rebooting the servers to get everything to work, but if they are then it's working well. I have just logged into MSN.com so it seems as though Orange have solved the problems with that as well and Hotmail should be available.

Onspeed has been a major bonus. It's compression really works - most importantly on the HTML text of webpages but obviously on graphics as well. Checking on my usage tonight I see Original Data:9MB compressed:1.5MB. This has really saved me much more money that the £25 cost of signing up to the service. It is this that allows me to drop down to the lower bandwidth I am about to change to. I am not completely convinced by the Orange compression that seems to take place on graphics. If I download a picture usinga download manager then I still get the compressed version - I would rather have a way of turning the compression off. The only problem with Onspeed has been that it doesn't pick up the fact I've made a 3G connection - I need to stop and start Onspeed when I have called up Internet Explorer (it's fine when I connect through broadband or dial up).

Reception is not perfect. I have rarely been able to rely on 3G reception and in my normal haunts (Abingdon, Macclesfield, Chorlton Manchester, Stourport) I just set the card to GPRS only. Having power from the car lighter has been good and I've always got 3G reception at motorway service stations. When I have had reliable 3G service then the speed has been good - but well under the theoretical maximums you may see quoted.

So, it seems that Orange have come good. I always knew there would be teething problems and there were times I regretted subscribing at all. But in retrospect, it was the right decision to sign up with Orange.