Today we take a look at Three’s mobile broadband offering, which is offered in direct competition with both O2’s and Vodafone’s  mobile broadband services.

Three differentiate themselves from the pack right off the mark by offering both a prepay (dubbed threepay…urgh) and a subscription based service (for which im sure the marketing department were sorely disapointed, since they couldnt figure out how to inject the brand name into another already existing, perfectly usable word) which runs at approximately €25 per month and €20 per month respectively. Though it should be noted the prepay can only be topped up in increments of €10 - so you could easily find yourself with a misterious €5 credit that always just seems to hang around every second month or so. lovely.

All other providers, O2 and Vodafone, offer only a subscription based service, for which (including Three’s subscription offering) you are locked into for at least 12months. The terms vary between provider, but the concensus seems to be that if you cancel your contract within the payment period, you will be required to pay up for the rest of the year irregardless.

Heres a table of how the carriers compare:

At present I only have a Three mobile broadband device at my disposal, so it would be unfair to criticise its performance without any point of reference, however given that…. dont be fooled by the “upto 3.6Mbps” marketing. Its pure nonesense. The technology may be *capapble* of such speeds, but it certainly does not deliver - not in any way. This is as close to mobile broadband as dialup is to a highspeed T1 line. That is to say, its lightyears away. The best speed I’ve managed to reach thus far is no more than perhaps 20Kbps which is so below the advertised speed it bears repeating. Thats a whole 180 times slower than advertised, and thats the BEST speed I’ve gotten so far!

Needless to say I am hearing much of the same from all customers of all three providers, which you can of course find out for yourself with a simple Googling of the products. However with all that said, these mobile internet products are not aimed at the casual user, at least i hope not. They will adequately suit the business professional on the move who needs to grab his or her email while on the go, with some decent expectation of getting the work they want done in a reasonable amount of time. But dont expect to watch many videos, download some *cough* movies or basically do anything thats bandwidth reliant.

I have found that at least in my area of Dublin, you’ll have little luck making use of the service indoors at all. Outside you’ll find that changes drastically, for obvious reasons.

As far as I’m conscerned the idea is sound, but the execution is poor. If the advertised speed was anywhere near realistic, and if the download usage limits werent so pittifully soo 2001 (believe me, thats a looong time in technology people!) I would say that this is something that anyone with a laptop should own. But thats just not the case, as it stands today, I say unless your a business professional who has a long commute and needs that extra few minutes of work - whatever the reason - then this is ideal for you; otherwise the lackluster software provided from Three, and the poor performance leave me… well im not uspet because this was to be expected, but disapointed. can we not do better? just advertise what your going to deliver already!

UPDATE: 07-MAY-08
Reporting in from St. Annes Park. just signing in to say that thusfar the advertised coverage map is quite accurate provided the caveats mentioned earlier. Im currently connected at about 1-2Kbps, which is pretty poor, but considering where I am - a public park, its not exactly the target locale or perhaps it is, if your like me. I hope to be coming down here more often to do my write ups, with some beautiful scenery; and you know… go get out of the ig cave, which is getting danker every day.