You’ve seen the adverts and you like the idea of mobile broadband on your laptop, but how do you go about choosing a mobile broadband service, and what quality of connection can you expect? With any broadband service, the primary concern should be with the performance of the internet connection. As a radio service which is dependent on your exact location, assessing the expected quality of a mobile broadband connection can be difficult. Whilst there are many satisfied mobile broadband users, in practice you may find that the service quality can vary greatly within a short distance, just as it can with a mobile phone, e.g. you can use the service at the bottom of your garden, but you can’t in your house.

The first step in choosing your provider should be taking a look at the mobile broadband coverage maps which tell you whether you’ll be within a 3G signal area or not. Being in a 3G signal area is important because it is only then that you have the possibility of a fast connection. When out of a 3G area, mobile broadband will revert to the GPRS standard, and whilst this will provide you with a connection, in practice it is slower than dial-up internet so most heavy internet users will find it frustratingly slow. Each network provides its own coverage map, so just search for “mobile broadband coverage” on the leading search engines and you will quickly find these. You will then be able to check the signal available for your postcode. Unfortunately, just because you are within the provider’s 3G signal area, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will have a fast mobile broadband experience. Firstly, anecdotal evidence suggests that the coverage maps are not entirely accurate, secondly, they cannot account for highly localised factors such as the walls of your house or the lie of the land which can affect the radio signal, and thirdly, it appears that some of the networks have high load on their network resources, so even though the signal is strong, the service gets slowed down by the number of people using it. Ideally, we suggest the following action:

1) If you can, borrow a USB modem from a friend to trial that provider in your area. Actually using the service in your exact area is really the only effective way of telling whether the service is going to work well enough for you, and the modem only takes a few minutes to install.

2) Failing that, make use of the free trial period offered by many of the mobile broadband providers to test out their USB modem. However, pay close attention to the Terms and Conditions under which the trial is offered, as they can be very strict and there are cases of return being refused if the T&C’s have not been complied with to the letter.

3) You can of course check on your phone to see whether you are receiving a 3G signal, but this won’t tell you much about the actual mobile broadband performance you could expect on your laptop, although it’s better than no check at all.

4) Read some mobile broadband reviews online. They have feedback from existing users, both good and bad, at BestMobileBroadband.co.uk, and this is useful to obtain a general overview of how well a service performs nationwide, as well as how good the network’s customer service is. From the reviews posted so far, it is clear that both network performance and customer service can vary greatly between providers, and certain networks do seem to have a higher proportion of dissatisfied customers. Our impression from these reviews is that Vodafone and T-Mobile are vying for top place in terms of overall customer satisfaction.

5) Another indicator to look at is industry awards. Vodafone won the Best Wireless ISP category at the 2008 Internet Service Providers Awards, which is a respected accolade because it is voted on by industry peers, and for 2009 there is a new Best Consumer Mobile Broadband category to look out for. Meanwhile T-Mobile has come first in the YouGov DongleTrack mobile broadband survey conducted in January 2009, which evaluated mobile broadband services on download and upload speeds, customer service, ease of use and value for money.

For our own connection, we opted for Vodafone mobile broadband, and we have been pleased with the service so far. In 3G areas we have had a respectable broadband connection speed which has often allowed us to stream radio and video, and was certainly good enough to get on with mobile working over the internet. However, 3G coverage is still largely restricted to larger towns and cities, although nationwide coverage should continue to improve rapidly. In fact, many communications experts are predicting that mobile broadband could become the most popular way to access the internet in the UK as early as 2010. The service certainly has many plus points including ease of installation, falling usage charges and the convenience of having internet on your laptop whenever you are within a signal area. So, if you haven’t got mobile broadband already, perhaps now is the time to find out what mobile broadband has to offer you. Providing you take note of our tips above, we expect it to be a rewarding experience.