Just had text from Three informing that as a loyal customer I can have the this for £17/month/24 month contract.
Nice but still not sold on this. I must say the performance on my basic 4g Samsung A21s is very good.
I like ti use a VPN but cant see this working with this.

In reply to a post by Banger:

New dongle has arrived and look at the upload!
https://www.speedtest.net/result/10226373902

Download is a bit low, but upload is working well. Given they seem to have stopped making USB dongles at this level (LTE category 4), and that Huawei are constrained from using any US made technology, I don't think there will be anything newer than this made.

LTE category 4 is often quoted in terms of top speeds which is simplistic, and not really relevant. The higher the category device (e.g. Cat 6, Cat 12, Cat 16) the more efficient it is at using the radio waves between itself and the mast.

Useful info here:
https://www.semiaccurate.com/2017/11/14/qualcomm-sho...

Certainly an improvement . Maybe you just hit a bad time for the download part.

Stable too with new driver which the dongle downloaded.

Ping statistics for 192.168.8.1:
Packets: Sent = 14082, Received = 14082, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 30ms, Average = 23ms

and new UI.

https://ibb.co/K6fLN0b

Good .

Re the interface, that's the same as my B311. Probably got the same electronics and OS. Just a different packaging of power supply and antenna(e).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Re the interface, that's the same as my B311. Probably got the same electronics and OS. Just a different packaging of power supply and antenna(e).

And a vastly different interface, USB rather than WiFi. USB is horrendously difficult to code for.

In the USB world the "OS" you talk about is actually in the driver running on the computer, rather than in the dongle. The dongle itself contains the radio electronics & SIM card interface, and the rest of the work is handed over to software on the PC.

This dongle claims to have WiFi which is fascinating, does that actually work? I have seen Win10 successfully create a WiFi hotspot from an ethernet internet connection, that my phone could then connect to. (That is Win10 built in functionality)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Re the interface, that's the same as my B311. Probably got the same electronics and OS. Just a different packaging of power supply and antenna(e).

And a vastly different interface, USB rather than WiFi. USB is horrendously difficult to code for.

In the USB world the "OS" you talk about is actually in the driver running on the computer, rather than in the dongle. The dongle itself contains the radio electronics & SIM card interface, and the rest of the work is handed over to software on the PC.

This dongle claims to have WiFi which is fascinating, does that actually work? I have seen Win10 successfully create a WiFi hotspot from an ethernet internet connection, that my phone could then connect to. (That is Win10 built in functionality)

No it doesn't have wifi its just a plain modem. The E8372 has wifi.

3 Test

https://www.speedtest.net/result/10228430274

In reply to a post by Banger:

No it doesn't have wifi its just a plain modem. The E8372 has wifi.

Ah! thats difference thanks.

If you remember the days of US Robotics, and Hayes external modems for dial up, that connected to your computer via an RS232 ("serial") link, these USB dongles are a bit different. They are "host controlled modems" - sometimes used on laptops, and with ISA/PCI cards inside desktop computers. The electronics is not usable without the software driver running which is doing a lot of the work.

not such a problem in 2020 when we have Core i3/i5/i7 and Ryzen, but it was an issue in the 386 and 486 days. When the computer was busy maxed out doing processing, these modems would often drop the phone line and cut off the connection...!

That speed isn't great, but it could be what you get from Three in your area.

The cheap chinese dongle has a wifi hotspot just needs USB power and a SIM and you can create a hotspot but the wifi is only n and connects at 72mbps.

In reply to a post by Banger:

The cheap chinese dongle has a wifi hotspot just needs USB power and a SIM and you can create a hotspot but the wifi is only n and connects at 72mbps.

That's clever, but at 72 mpbs that means a single antenna on the 2.4 GHz band - not surprising given its size.

I have a pocket router from (GL.iNet AR750) which can optionally take a USB dongle and create a WiFi network; it has a few more features, but can run from a 5v USB supply. Sometimes useful for the road warrior.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/GL-iNet-GL-AR750-300Mbps-pr...