Three USB Datamodem

mdfireng

Bought the new USB modem from Three yesterday. €129 for the card and €19.99 per month with a 10GB cap.

Set it up on the laptop in the office in Dubin and it was excellent - 2mbps. Took it on the train home to Dundalk and coverage was fairly good.

Got home to Greenore on the Cooley peninsula and no coverage what-so-ever!:mad:

Been onto Three's customer service today and despite what I have read on these boards they are really good.

Does anyone know if buying an external aerial is likely to get me some coverage or should I just accept my fate and take the 2 week refund?

This is a really good product for anyone in a 3g coverage area. As for me there is no light at the end of the dial up tunnel!

Urban Weigl

Depending on the geography and the way the base station is set up, an external antenna could give you a solid connection ~20km away from 3G coverage. However, I do not believe the USB modem has a port for an external antenna.

At just €19.99 a month, you could always use it for when you're travelling and not at home. Could still be worthwhile, and 3 are building out their coverage quite rapidly from what I am told.

ednwireland

what about vodafone or 02 more likely to have coverage (although still unlikely to have 3g coverage)
you'll be waiting a while for 3 i would have thought up there.

http://www.vodafone.ie/roaming/domestic/network/index.jsp

http://www.o2online.ie/wps/wcm/connect/O2/Home/Personal/Services/Coverage+in+Ireland/Coverage%20map

Urban Weigl

If you have a 3G phone, you can do a network search and figure out whether Vodafone or O2 have 3G coverage in your area that way.

mdfireng

I put the datacard in a laptop and headed up the road in the car. About 7-8 miles away I got full HSDPA coverage - full bars. Limited 3G coverage was about 2 miles away. Would a swap to the old PCMA card with aerial and HSDPA wireless router be an option?

Urban Weigl

mdfireng wrote:

I put the datacard in a laptop and headed up the road in the car. About 7-8 miles away I got full HSDPA coverage - full bars. Limited 3G coverage was about 2 miles away. Would a swap to the old PCMA card with aerial and HSDPA wireless router be an option?

Yes, it may work, but without knowing the geography I really could not tell you for sure. For example, if there is a hill or mountain in the way, it won't work through that. However if you have near line of sight from your house, it should work in most cases, especially with a high gain external aerial.

cgarvey

Moved IoffL > Wireless

culabula

mdfireng wrote:

Bought the new USB modem from Three yesterday. €129 for the card and €19.99 per month with a 10GB cap.



Been onto Three's customer service today and despite what I have read on these boards they are really good.

Does anyone know if buying an external aerial is likely to get me some coverage or should I just accept my fate and take the 2 week refund?

This is a really good product for anyone in a 3g coverage area. As for me there is no light at the end of the dial up tunnel!

The main man in Grafton Street once told me that if you told *them* about a black spot, they'd see that a mast was put up. Worth trying.

Psygnosis

I'm having a similar problem I live in Rush and get 1 bar it works but in only one room get around 25K max would a mobile phone booster work, read on a forum that this is a connection inside it for a external airiel but people were not sure if it was active.

Zaphod

mdfireng wrote:

Bought the new USB modem from Three yesterday. €129 for the card and €19.99 per month with a 10GB cap.

Set it up on the laptop in the office in Dubin and it was excellent - 2mbps. Took it on the train home to Dundalk and coverage was fairly good.

Were you given a choice between the PCMCIA datacard or the USB modem?

culabula

Zaphod wrote:

Were you given a choice between the PCMCIA datacard or the USB modem?

You can choose either -same dataplans apply. Online or instore. Bring money.

mdfireng

No didnt get a choice of the card or the USB modem although I admit I didnt ask for one.

Bobino

Can anyone tell me what the Upload speed is with the 3 datacard and is the latency acceptable.
Thanks
Bobino

Urban Weigl

Maximum download speed is 3.6 Mbps, maximum upload speed is 384 kbps. Speeds may be significantly slower if you are not in a good coverage area, or there are lots of users on the same base station.

Real world latency averages between 100-200ms on a HSDPA network.

mdfireng

Took the card back to the shop yesterday and got the money back. The guy in the shop on Grafton Street said three were currently working on extending the network so that by the end of the year most of the country (he said almost 100%) would be within coverage

mickger

I got my USB modem to work on all my Computers including my Laptop but it won't work on the girlfriends Laptop and its only 5 months old. When plugged in it just shows up as a mass storage device. Is there any way of manually installing the modem??? Any drivers or software for Windows Xp out there??

therecklessone

mickger wrote:

I got my USB modem to work on all my Computers including my Laptop but it won't work on the girlfriends Laptop and its only 5 months old. When plugged in it just shows up as a mass storage device. Is there any way of manually installing the modem??? Any drivers or software for Windows Xp out there??

Might be a software problem.

I had a little application called DVD43 installed that caused a conflict and led to a number of BDODs. It caused the laptop to see the modem as a DVD drive!

Zaphod

I got the PCMCIA card at the weekend. The service is very good when in an area with Three coverage and seems to be much more stable than the Vodafone equivalent.

Unfortunately, the nearest enabled mast is 3 miles away, and the signal dies after 1.5 miles. I can actually see another mast from the back garden, about 1000 yards away, but it doesn't carry Three - only Vodafone, Meteor and O2 GSM.

culabula wrote:

The main man in Grafton Street once told me that if you told *them* about a black spot, they'd see that a mast was put up. Worth trying.

Any idea which of *them* would be the best person to contact?

culabula

Zaphod wrote:

I got the PCMCIA card at the weekend. The service is very good when in an area with Three coverage and seems to be much more stable than the Vodafone equivalent.

Unfortunately, the nearest enabled mast is 3 miles away, and the signal dies after 1.5 miles. I can actually see another mast from the back garden, about 1000 yards away, but it doesn't carry Three - only Vodafone, Meteor and O2 GSM.



Any idea which of *them* would be the best person to contact?

Regrettably, he's the ex-main man, he left last Friday :-(

whisht

mickger wrote:

I got my USB modem to work on all my Computers including my Laptop but it won't work on the girlfriends Laptop and its only 5 months old. When plugged in it just shows up as a mass storage device. Is there any way of manually installing the modem??? Any drivers or software for Windows Xp out there??

My understanding of these modems is they all load as mass storage device first which contains the actual install files, drivers etc and then a wizard starts after a while although some guys on here said on some pc's it was very slow. I have had similiar type issues with my own PC before, where I plug in devices and the device manager wont recognise anything for up to a minute or 2!!!

Urban Weigl

OT: 3 has launched X-series on the Nokia N95 in Austria.

Update: More information can be found at http://x-series.drei.at/portal/de/MainPage.html -- albeit in German. Very interestingly, they have their own discussion forum just like Boards, where they interact directly with customers (and customers with each other). Sounds like a very brave and possibly very good idea to me. I assume they moderate posts to some extent, must register for an account...

mayhem#

Urban Weigl wrote:

Yes, it may work, but without knowing the geography I really could not tell you for sure. For example, if there is a hill or mountain in the way, it won't work through that. However if you have near line of sight from your house, it should work in most cases, especially with a high gain external aerial.

Any tips on where to get such an antenna?

E.

Steoob

hey i have a question... do you have to go onto a phone contract to buy a datacard? i tried the buy one today off the 3 site and aparantly i have to switch to bill to do it? i wouldn't mind being billed for the datacard but im not going onto bill phone... anyone know how i can avoid it?

Sam Vimes

the modem is completely separate to any phone you might have

Sam Vimes

having looked at the site i can see why you were confused. you have the option of moving your number over but i don't know why anyone would want to do that. specify that you don't want to move your number over and the options to fill in your phone number are disabled

Steoob

ya i found out how to buy it without going on phone contract... tho i'd like this to be explained to me once and for all... if i go on the 10gb contract, that has nothing to do with phones or text, if i go on the 3gb contract i get calls and texts incluided and all that malarky... so doe sthat mean that 3gb is for people who want to go onto phone contracts and the 10gb version is for people who want to stay completely indepentant of their phone network (other than the broadband f course)

Sam Vimes

Steoob wrote:

ya i found out how to buy it without going on phone contract... tho i'd like this to be explained to me once and for all... if i go on the 10gb contract, that has nothing to do with phones or text, if i go on the 3gb contract i get calls and texts incluided and all that malarky... so doe sthat mean that 3gb is for people who want to go onto phone contracts and the 10gb version is for people who want to stay completely indepentant of their phone network (other than the broadband f course)

not quite. the 10GB is for broadband only and can be treated if it was coming from a provider that wasn't a mobile network.

the differences are:

the 3gb can make calls and send texts. its not meant to be used as a mobile contract because the sim would spent 99% of its time in the modem so the person couldn't be contacted. its really only for sending texts and making the occasional call (no minutes included of course)


the 3gb can roam onto vodafone's network and so can be used more widely.

the 3gb can roam onto foreign networks. the 10gb can only be used on other 3 networks.

the 3gb one is twice the price per month but the modem is cheaper

Steoob

what good is the calls and texts? where can you send/call from if the sims in the modem?

Sam Vimes

Steoob wrote:

what good is the calls and texts? where can you send/call from if the sims in the modem?

you can send texts on the computer with some software that i think is supplied with it. for calls you put the sim into a phone, which is why i said its not really meant for a mobile contract

Sam Vimes

does the modem work with vista straight out of the box? there's vista drivers for the e630 on the three website but only mac drivers for the e220.

the drones told me it does but he told me to download the e630 vista drivers until i explained that they're for the e630. for some reason i don't trust him

Random

How much is this outside my 10gig? I rang 3 customer care to hear one person prompting another on the phone (ok, so it was 1am and whatever else .... !). I asked how much outside my cap and she said 0.05c. This is half a cent. I asked her was it 1c per 2meg and she said yes.

I then asked something else and then at the end asked again, was it 1c per 2meg outside my cap and she said yes.

Is this correct? Can anyone find this on the website? I'm clearly blind


++ edit ++
The website says 5c per MB .. http://www.three.ie/handsets_new/datacards_e220.htm
Lovely stuff. My first experience with 3 customer care and they got it wrong. I feel thrilled to have become one of the million