[Gllug] Internet connection through mobile phone

[Christopher Hunter]

On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 18:01 +0000, David Damerell wrote:

> What percentage of the _population_?
> 
> What percentage of London? We are, after all, not the Outer Hebrides
> Linux Users Group.

Well, interesting you should ask.  This afternoon, a couple of friends
and I went visiting, which involved a trip across much of North London.
Between us, we had mobile net-connected devices that used most of the
service providers.  

The best results we got were with O2 (on a BlackBerry) which showed
almost 30% of the routes we took to have 3G coverage.  The rest of the
routes had 2G coverage (with the very occasional drop-out).  The very
worst was T-Mobile, followed by "3" -  both of which had much worse
coverage than O2.  Vodafone was almost as good as O2 on the way, but
entirely failed to work in any mode at our destination!

Our conclusion was that all the "mobile broadband" services are pretty
poor, and the data rates are nowhere near as "high" as the abysmal ADSL
speeds that most of the country endure.

You can draw your own conclusions about the percentage of population
coverage - I frankly don't care much.  All I can say is that NONE of the
"services" are truly reliable, and are certainly too poor to pay money
for! 

C.

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug