Three touts 21.1Mb/s mobile broadband dongle

Three UK is pitching a new 802.11n Wi-Fi enabled mobile broadband dongle, this one with HSPA+ technology on board capable of delivering download speeds of up to 21.1Mb/s. The operator does not fully supports the tech yet, though it is aiming to roll out HSPA+ on 80 per cent of its network by the end of the year. Huawei E586 …

[AndrueC]

Yay - 21Mb/s!

As long as:

..you are standing at the base of the mast.

..at three in the morning so you're not sharing the cell with anyone else.

..the operator has upgraded the backhaul, core and transits to cope with those kinds of speeds.

It's progress of a sort but I doubt many people will see 21Mb/s very often if at all. I can believe 'a bit faster than at the moment' though.

[RichardO]

3 in the morning?

That's peak period in a lot of areas! Now what would people be doing with a stack of data at 3am.....

[Andy Livingstone]

Possibly

Organizing Street parties in London?

[Anonymous Coward]

@AndrueC

And yet I can easily get 5.7Mb/s sat here at work whenever I try (using the older version).

It actually used to be faster than our Orange Broadband until they upgraded some of their kit.

[Thomas 4]

Great news!

So now you can burn through your 5Gb data limit in minutes rather than hours now?

[bob 46]

unlimited

three are doing a sim only mobile package that is genuinely "all you can eat". Does this not apply to their dongles too?

Just asking, not flaming.

[Steve Oliver 1]

Do you mean the One Plan?

I was sold this by my local Tesco Phone Shop for use in my Huawei 585, only to be told the next day by 3 that you can only use it in a phone, not a dongle or Mi-Fi device.

So no, it doesn't apply to dongles.

[frank ly]

@Steve Oliver

That sounds good for use in my Android phone running Froyo, which will act as a Wi-Fi hotspot (with up to five users, I think; or was it three users...?). As I understand things, '3' are Skype friendly in that they don't get snotty if you use VoIP over their data service (unlike my current provider who forbids it in their T&Cs).

[pditty]

3 is upgrading?

3 is upgrading their network?

Wait... 3 got a network?

I was sure they were leasing network space (with their traffic being at the bottom of the priority list) from the big players.

[I understand now]

How very useful?

I wish these telcos would announce something more useful, like "we have now given all commuter railways a dedicated array of masts so that signal doesn't drop every 25 seconds"

That is something people would really appreciate.

[RichardO]

@pditty

Yes, 3 have their own network. It's currently the largest 3G network in the UK on number of sites. Not sure if that translates largest for coverage/capacity, but it works OK for me.