Three 15GB package advice

I'm thinking of signing up for Three's 15GB per month mobile broadband package. But I'm unsure what kind of speed I'd get in my area. Three's coverage checker says I'm covered for outdoor and indoor use for mobile broadband. But it doesn't mention any speed estimate. Basically I'd want at least 3-4Mbps consistently for it to be worth getting.

I was thinking of buying a second hand Huawei E3231 (the dongle that comes with the 15GB package) and trying a PAYG three mobile broadband SIM for a month to test the speeds I can get.

Will this give me a good idea of the speeds I should expect? Or do the PAYG and Pay monthly services support different speeds?

EDIT: Or I suppose the cheaper option would be to buy a Three 1GB PAYG SIM and put it in my Galaxy S3 to test speeds?

Edited by deleted (Wed 03-Oct-12 15:51:55)

We have 3 on PAYG with a roof antenna. That achieves anything between 6Meg and 11.5Meg down and between 2 and 3.5Meg up.

More typically in daily usage 6Meg to 9Meg down and 2.4Meg up.

Without the antenna investment, more like 4.5Meg to 9Meg down.

These figures are meaningless for your experience because it all depends on signal strength and contention. We're in a rural area so the latter is probably quite low and we're 2.7km from the cell with line of sight using that antenna.

What they do confirm is that the speeds are possible on PAYG and I am not aware of anything 3 do to prioritise contract customers. And, so, in order to find out, your own plan of trying it out on PAYG should determine whether it's useful for you, other than asking someone else who lives very near you, it's the only way you're likely to know how it performs where you are.

As a final note, a warning about jitter (variable latency) - with the antenna that's improved but with the dongle ping times vary wildly from 35ms to 85ms. And, it's worth checking the sitefinder.ofcom.org database to see where your nearest cells are - even with dongles, positioning is everything - here, same kit downstairs won't even get a signal.

Thanks for the info, I'm now thinking of getting a 1GB PAYG SIM for £10.49 and putting it in my Galaxy S3 to test the speeds. Maybe not quite as accurate as testing in the same dongle, but I think the standards used by both are the same (HSPA+) so it should still give me a good idea. Also its a bit cheaper if I find out its not suitable and the dongle comes with the package if I decide to go for it. What do you think?

As far as latency goes, its not a priority for me. I actually have Sky Broadband that's fine for gaming and other latency intensive tasks. I'm just looking for something to help me download faster.

Edited by deleted (Wed 03-Oct-12 15:59:50)

The HSPA+ standard is the same, but as an analogy, my iPhone won't even pick up the Wi-Fi in our house downstairs, whereas a laptop or tablet does, and gets a pretty good signal strength.

Apart from the iPhone (at least, my one) having abysmal Wi-Fi performance one of the factors is the size of the antenna and in the same manner (despite the tech being different the same is probably true), a dongle is better optimised.

In this respect you'd be able to see if you at least get decent basic speeds that should only be improved with a dongle. On the other hand it may give you a false impression that it's worse than it is.