What do home workers do for internet access when their fixed line broadband connection has been terminated prior or subsequent to a house move? Having been plunged into this situation several times over the past year or so, I decided to find out what the options are.

If a BT line is not already installed in the property, as was the case with me, it could take in excess of a month to get broadband fully up and running, and with many broadband providers - not just BT - requiring the line before they can supply a service, it's a not insignificant problem.

It also emerged recently that Virgin have had their own problems coping with the mountain of requests from disaffected BT users. Late shipment of wireless routers and a general inability to cope with demand on their part mean you could be in for a wait to be connected whatever option you decide to go with.

So, here's the long and short of it: unless you want to risk jumping on an unsecured network nearby you'll need to invest in a 3G dongle. Anecdotally I've heard the quality of these has improved significantly since they first burst onto the market, with all the major mobile network operators selling an extensive array of dongles, depending on how much data you're planning to transfer.

Now this is by no means an exhaustive test, merely my own experience, so yours may be a lot different. I tried one from Vodafone and one from O2. First up was Vodafone.

Extremely simple to set up, the stylish white and red dongle glows when in use, and provides a simple read out to check coverage. It's also got a control panel allowing detailed management of the device. Sadly, this was all a moot point because there was no coverage in my flat in central-ish London. I didn't imagine second floor flat of three in a residential street in SE1 would have coverage problems but there you go.

O2 fared better; easy to set up, manage and get running, with coverage adequate. Trying to remove and uninstall the O2 connection manager client once I'd done this little test, however, was another matter. It took a lot of head scratching and tinkering to achieve, but nice that O2 was so keen to stay on my laptop - marks for enthusiasm. The speed however was inconsistent, ranging from good to not much better than dial-up , and this was just sitting in my flat with 'excellent' or 'very good' signal strength

I'd say that mobile broadband is still something to use in tandem with fixed broadband, not as a replacement. Interestingly, as I was writing this up a new report from Broadband-expert.co.uk revealed download speeds are only 24 per cent of those advertised - 1.1Mbit/s compared with a pledged maximum of 4.5Mbit/s.

It's not great, but I'm sure it will get better. In the meantime, take a deep breath, and prepare to wait.

10 Oct 2009