Wifi

SligoLady

My partner was given a Galaxy tablet for Christmas from his family but as we don't have wifi in the house, it's never been used. We have the O2 dongle stick but it broke last week so insteading of forking out €40 or €50 for a new one, we're thinking of cancelling our account with O2 and going to another provider so we can use both the Tablet and the laptop.

I'm very good with computers but I actually haven't a notion how broadband/ wifi etc works exactly so please don't mock my questions or be too technical with your answers
Can anyone tell me who might be the best providers to try and how much a basic package is per month? Also what is it all set up..Do we have to get a phone line and have a house phone? We've no need for a house phone and our internet usage would be quite low as we just use it for casual browsing in the evening. I don't want to ring a provider being completely clueless and signing up to something thast will cost us a small fortune so any help will be greatly appreciated!

Son Of A Vidic

You shouldn't need a landline for a WiFi service provider. The amount of people I know who have got their landlines out in the last 2 years is unbelievable. No matter who you go with, systems are virtually plug and play so you don't need to worry about how it actually works.

Knowing the best level of security/encryption is important though, to prevent snooping/sniffers from piggybacking. But that's something you can look at when you're up and running.

Are you located in Sligo or outside? The reason I ask is because I'm out in the sticks and 3G is my WiFi provider. It's part of the National broadband Scheme and it cost me €19.99 a month with a 25GB cap. I was with Fastcom but they charged me €39.99 a month and had slower speeds with weekly disruption of service. There was no cap on Downloads/uploads.

I tried O2 out my way but their signal strength ect, was pretty pathetic. Just in case you are located out of town, here's a link to check if your elegible for the NBS scheme. Enter your address details into this link and it will check whether they cover your area or not.

http://www.three.ie/contractstore/shop/flow/BroadbandCoverageCheck.aspx


This link is a general overview of the scheme.

http://www.three.ie/nbs/index.html

Gipo3

If your happy with O2 you could get the "hotshot" which enables you to have wi-fi. Here

Shadow78

Vodafone
3

If your doing very light usage (10 - 15GB a month) its hard to beat the prices from the mobile operators. €20 a month

If your looking for good quality broadband then some DSL product from company or Fixed Wireless from the likes of fastcom would give a better service with bigger downloads, but at over twice the price €40 - €50

The mobile Wi Fi devices work like your old O2 dongle except they dont need to be plugged into the computer/laptop they send a local wifi signal within your house so you can have multiple devices on the go in different rooms using the one Mobile WiFi device.

If you were pefectly happy with your 02 device before then a Mobile WiFi device would do the job nicely for your galaxy and laptop.

SligoLady

Thanks a million for the replies guys. I had no idea the mobile providers provided WiFi for pretty much the amount as the dongle. Considering we only have very light usage and are just on the outskirts of town so signal is quite good, we'll probably head down to O2 and swap over to WiFi Happy Days!! Thanks again, you probably just saved me a fortune