In reply to a post by 5km:

You are not going to gain anything. You already have good signal and very good throughput. Just wait a little until three have finished upgrading their network to fully support 21.6Mbps.

fair enough but to get my good signal I need to have the dongle on a baking tray in the lounge! not very aesthetically pleasing

I heard back from the reseller after disputing with google checkout. They are taking about a restock fee etc, I really don't think this is fair as I did ask prior to purchase about the improvements, any thoughts on this?

Two things:

1) The best speed that you are getting without the directional aerial is not with the modem simply plugged into the computer, but with a baking tray as a groundplane/reflector.

2) You say that you are using a 'modem mate' - that is not quite the same as connecting an external aerial to a socket on the modem. Back in my email over GSM days with a external aerial (often many miles off land whilst at sea) my phone's aerial connecter was such that it disconnected the internal aerial when I plugged in the external one.

So, if with the external aerial and the modem mate you are getting better than with the modem alone, without any baking tray etc, then I waould say that the aerial is doing its job and you are thus getting an improvement.

Cheers!

I sent the antenna back last week after opening a dispute on google checkout. I bought a set of homeplugs at the weekend & have my router & the 3g modem upstairs now & am getting 77% signal strength according the my Draytek which the 3g modem is plugged into. Whereas downstairs it was considerably lower. I no longer need my backing tray to achieve this mind you I should try it to see if i can get any better than 77%

The Three supplied E367 does have an external antenna port (it's under a small pull out flap on the side of the device).

Thanks Anonymous, I've found the external antenna port. I was looking for a round flap like I'd seen on the Huawei web site, and mistook the external antenna port for the flap to stick my finger in to remove the back cover.

This could be quite useful in the future.

I got that antenna for my E160 and the speed increase is unbelievable. I would guess its not compatible for your dongle. I would recommend that antenna to any one who has a slow connection or weak signal. I now can stream youtube and have a conversation on skype. I could never do this before I had the High Gain Antenna.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

I got that antenna for my E160 and the speed increase is unbelievable. I would guess its not compatible for your dongle. I would recommend that antenna to any one who has a slow connection or weak signal. I now can stream youtube and have a conversation on skype. I could never do this before I had the High Gain Antenna.