I ask because practically the first example of broadband data access I saw was in Germany, where they made a huge fuss about “UMTS”, before marching in to give a client presentation on their laptop. It was toe-curlingly embarrassing, even after one gets round the national tendency to be prolix when sitting in front of Powerpoint: slides would take ages to actually grovel up (but no problem for the presenter! he had LOADS to say while we were waiting, oh dear me yes!)

Once it had lost connection twice, I jumped into a phonebox and leapt back out as NetworkMan… ok, maybe not… anyway, I had a look at the machine. A quick test download from a known fast site showed that despite being in 3G mode, the stick was struggling along at… 5k a second.

So I found them a wire and plugged that in.

Clearly without investment in infrastructure 3G will not be an acceptable route to the governments proposed 2Mb universal service obligation, but if they are to invest why not do it in ensuring FFTC is available in all areas, urban and rural. I live just 8 miles outside Derby on a new estate with over 1500 houses but only get 700k ADSL and no good 3G coverage and it seems that I will have to move house to continue to run my growing business from home or commute to an office nearer the city which has sensible communications. Neither is that attractive.

Err, well – the whole point of them is to use when out and about. I’ve got a wired broadband connection at home and in the office so I don’t need it to work in them (although ironically both have excellent reception).

I think it is fair to say that mobile broadband doesn’t live up to its claims. What excluse can there be for no signal at all in places in the centre of a major city?

Given this fact, why does anyone expect this system to work on a train, moving quickly in and out of areas that are randomly changing from receiving signals that are good, indifferent, bad and, in open countryside, even non-existent. What do you think happens when you go through a tunnel or past a hill blocking the transmitter? Well, durh.

I use mine in central London, and whilst I do mostly get HSDPA, the signal level is usually just 2 out of 5, and I find the connection speed very poor. Whilst it does work [as long as the application, such as Outlook, doesn't time out], it just takes an incredibly long time.

Still, a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for a landline and traditional broadband !

I use a ‘3′ E169G for all my broadband – at home and travelling and find it quite adequate for my purposes. The times I’ve bothered to use it on the Brighton to London train it generally works if slowly. But, it’s the tunnels that spoil the expereince. What can you do?

I’ve not tried it with the BBC iPlayer using it instead for radio. Then, I day dream about why I cant pick up the digital TV Freeview signals!

Hmm. Most of the Crosscountry stock are Voyagers, but they also have five HST sets which have been refurbed by Wabtec to exactly the same specifications as the National Express HSTs. So far as I’ve noticed, I get the same problem on both Voyagers and HSTs.

I can’t say whether it works better on National Express (either HSTs or 225s) as they have free wi-fi anyway, so I tend to use that – although it is clearly severely throttled as it’s very slow even on a nearly empty train. Don’t recall having ever tried to use the dongle on a 185 (Transpennine), but next time I travel on one I’ll give it a go.

[* My service is onspeed dot com, and I have no relationship other than as a satisfied customer. Oh, and it serves as a poor man's encypted link over open WiFi spots too! ]