Very OT, but you lot know everything.

Due to a big cock up by my past and current ISP I am now without broadband. I requested a MAC, gave it to new ISP. Turns out that the migration never happened, old ISP have terminated my BB, new ISP won't / can't do anything until I get new MAC. So I am looking at 1 to 2 weeks with no broadband.

I have a couple of options.

1, use dial up.... can you imagine that? I am pretty sure my old PC has an inbuilt modem.

2, I have a works mobile phone. The internet on it is a bit pants so I was wondering if I can somehow use that to connect my PC to the internet. What hardware do I need? Bluetooth dongle? Will this be any faster than the dial up?

Why the old and new ISP companies didn't bother to contact me is beyond me. My wife did get a couple of calls over the past 2 to 3 weeks but all they said was 'hi, we need to speak to your husband, when can we call back?' and that was it, no one ever spoke to me, no letters, no emails. Bloody idiots.

Anyway, any thoughts on the above two options? Or is there another option?
(Option 3 using neighbours wireless is not ethical, and besides, 2 of the 3 have passwords, the 3rd I couldn't connect to )

I used a works mobile with a USB cable for about 12 weeks when the ISP were having a p!ssing match. It cost a fortune, but was much quicker than dial-up.

It all depends if your employer will stress over the mobile bill.

The other thing that might be an option if your neighbours are ok is to ask if you can piggy back their connection for 2weeks or so.

hth

you could tether you mobile to your computer, so you could use the 3g connection.

But depends on your mobile phone.

I have a HTC desire, I would just connect the phone via the usb cable, and select the correct option on the phone. Or create wireless SSID point.

^ thats what i'd do, HOWEVER...

i'm told some phone companies don't like this being done (o2 don't like it) if you use it quite a lot, it may cause problems with them, so do it carefully

see if you can get one of those mobile broadband dongles of someone, they are still a rip off, but normally cheaper than data on a normal phone contract (effectively they are a data only sim card)

mobile phone 'internet' isn't necessarily the same as 'data' on your contract - you could have unlimited internet, but still get charged for data (I think its to do with the server it connects to or something...)

[Edited on 31/5/2011 by mcerd1]

I don't want to ask my boss, so that prob puts the mobile option out.
Will try the dial up tonight and see how sloooooow it really is.

you can get a zte 3 mobile dongle for £14, and a 3 month/3gb sim for about £7.50 delivered. This gives you excellent mobile internet IME, its all i have at home and is faster than i need.

As Joel has said, 3 dongle and pre loaded 3 sim card. My second dongle was £5 - the 3gb pre loaded sims have crept upto about a tenner on amazon though.

You could ask your neighbours if you could use their BB while waiting for your new ISP? My neighbour had a problem with his BB so I let him use my wireless for a short while. I used the router security to add his PC to the "allowed" list temporarily.

Worth asking, I would have thought?

My moby contract with tmobile gave me unlimited bb for 5quid a month on top of my contract. I've since got a new contract that gave me this HTC desire HD battery eater with 500 texts, 500 minutes, unlimited bb and unlimited land line calls for 25quid/month. I've used this phone as a wireless hotspot for the lappy and my other wifi gear and it was getting me 2.2mbs. It was a tiny bit faster when tethered direct to lappy.
If you exceed the 'fair use' policy by downloading tons of music/movies, you don't get charged extra, the connection just slows down.
Browsing lcbers and such forums barely touches the download numbers.

quote:

---

Originally posted by JoelP
you can get a zte 3 mobile dongle for £14, and a 3 month/3gb sim for about £7.50 delivered. This gives you excellent mobile internet IME, its all i have at home and is faster than i need.

---

Well, fallen at the first two hurdles.
My two neighbours I know aren't the ones with the wireless connections, so I'm not going door to door down my street.
2nd option of using a modem... I use Ubuntu not Windows, and that comes out of the box without any modem set up. I can set it up for a modem, but you need a working internet connection.
Only option I can use 'quickly' is to get my spare PC install windows on it and then use that for dial up.
Would rather not go and buy a dongle just yet as I am told I will get a MAC code on Monday, but not holding my breath.

3 Mobile dongle is now my back up line, previously I used to have a second BT line with Broadband from a different ISP.
However how well it works depends your location.


3 dongles and routers come in different types and offere different speeds, the ZTE dongle type is very easy to unlock for use with different ISPs which is good for going abroad.

Ubuntu should recognise and install USB dongle without an existing internet connection --- I known Mint will do this but for a while the drivers that came with Mint were slightly ahead of its Ubuntu parent.

I use a T-mobile dongle on my laptop, which runs Mint. Worked straight off, with barely a break in step first time.

As opposed to trying to use it on Vista, which took around 30 minutes to get up and running. (oh... what a surprise...)

I got a 3 zte dongle working on my netbook which was running linpus lite no problem. Iirc the relevant software was already on the dongle

G

If you have a laptop with a decent battery, you could always go sit in mcdonalds car park for anything urgent....

I use a 3G dongle when in the UK. Not too expensive and good speed.

[Edited on 1-6-11 by designer]