Mobile Broadband internet connectivity

Hi, I live in the country without landline and my mobile broadband is slow. I am doing an online course that requires video content and it impedes my learning if I have to keep waiting for the video to load. My questions is:

"If you could hypothetically connect them together, Would using the signals from 4 USB dongles together improve internet speed?"

If this is the wrong place to ask this question could you suggest website where I might be able to find help or answers to my problem.

Many thanks

Highly unlikely. MBB is a shared service, so if they were on the same network connected to the same cell then you'd be competing with yourself for bandwidth.

If they were all with different operators there's a chance, but still only a small one, because the higher / variable latency with HSPA services would act to drag all the connections downwards towards the lowest-common-denominator.

You'd first need to establish whether the slow speeds are down to signal or contention at the cell (many users using it).

The first one you can do something about - by experimenting with the positioning of the dongle, upstairs outside normally works best. You may need a USB extension cable to put it outside. For instance I only see 4Meg down with the dongle inside, but 8Meg to 10Meg with it outside.

Alternate option is something like the 3 MiFi device which has two internal antennas to strengthen the signal and it can be out outside the window creating its own WiFi network which you then connect to indoors as long as you're not too far from it.

To expand slightly on this as well. It is VERY unlikely you would be able to load balance across the connections as this requires hardware at both ends.

So, if you had 4 x 1Mb/s mobile connections on the same device then you would end up potentially being able to download 4 different things at 1Mb/s - not 1 thing at 4Mb/s.

So, for video it would most likely not make a difference as the likelihood is you want to download a video 4 times faster.

Do you get a decent 3G signal in your area? Some USB modems are known to impede performance - you might do better with a MiFi device similar to these:

O2 ZTE MF60
Three Huawei E356

Get a landline service. Depending on distance to exchange you might be able to get something cheap and decent. I could help you with this

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 16-Aug-12 20:50:20)