Mobile internet

[talisman]

Its driving me nuts. Im moored at Foxhangers SN101SS and use a vodafone K3565 dongle. Its always been slow and lately it seems to be getting worse. It now drops out at least 6 times a night, a few months ago it never dropped out? I use the dongle with a 1mt lead at a window. I just tried a 3mt lead out of the window taped to a post above roof height. Its even worse , dropping out and then telling me "no device", ? However it connects to 3G which i assumed would be better? Caen hill marina is only about 100mts away from my present mooring and they have wifi. Perhaps i should try an antenna to maybe use the wifi signal. This problem is absolutely frustrating and annoying. It just seems network providers cant provide accurate info on signal strengths in various areas of the country. Would a newer dongle help or must i keep buying equipment and cross it off the list when it dosent work.I would happily pay to have this sorted out as already stated ," this is driving me nuts".Surely some boater must have cracked this by now lol.

[Lady Muck]

I would say, change service providers. In our 7 years of using mobile internet we came to this conclusion quite a while ago, we now use an unlocked dongle (Vodafone wifi dongle) with different sims depending on where we are and what the signal strength is. 3 is utterly dire at our mooring, Vodafone is ok, I say ok, we lost the nearest cell when they demolished a nearby factory that had a mast ontop, it's not been so great since as we are now exactly between two cells and it's as if the device can't decide which one it prefers. Sigh.

 

Otherwise you will have some kind of breakdown trying to connect.

 

I've used antennae to boost the signal and I'd say they have limited use if you are trying to connect with a mast that is some way away. If it's dropping out like you say, then the mast you are trying to connect with is probably at the distance limit of what it's possible to connect to.

 

Have you called the service provider? If you give them a postcode they can at least look and see if there are problems with the mast you are trying to connect to, I've done this before and they've told me that it was being repaired, you then know at least that it's not problems with your equipment.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Lady Muck

[Ryeland]

I gave up on Vodafone. '3' is 10 times better. Sims available on ebay 3month/3GB for £10.50. I unlocked the Vodafone dongle with a free code from the web.

 

Richard

[smileypete]

Have a look at Ofcom Sitefinder, a dongle with external antenna and a decent GSM panel antenna would help. Someone (Bottle?) mentioned with some dongles you can choose which tower to connect to.

 

Though as others say it's probably better to try a sim on a different nework than spend a lot on kit.

 

cheers, Pete.

~smpt~

Edited February 24, 2013 by smileypete

[dmr]

I really would switch to 3!!

Our (ex) vodafone was about £15 for 3GByte (though you actually only get about 2.5 as they cheat on the compression)

3 give you 15GByte for a similar price.

 

3 have much better 3G coverage, Vodafone have more masts but most are only 2G.

You are a bit out in the sticks down there. We had a couple of nights in CaanHill over Christmas and 3 did work but the signal was low.

Some drop out and reconnection is common if the signal is weak. I have heard that the signal strength goes up and down to reflect usage, so if the cell is busy they turn it down. Don't know if this is true but on a weak signal we certainly get more diconnections at certain times of the day.

 

3 works on almost all of the K&A though is marginal in places.

If you are mostly static a directional aerial could well help.

 

.........Dave

[Ex- Member]

Its driving me nuts. Im moored at Foxhangers SN101SS and use a vodafone K3565 dongle. Its always been slow and lately it seems to be getting worse. It now drops out at least 6 times a night, a few months ago it never dropped out? I use the dongle with a 1mt lead at a window. I just tried a 3mt lead out of the window taped to a post above roof height. Its even worse , dropping out and then telling me "no device", ? However it connects to 3G which i assumed would be better? Caen hill marina is only about 100mts away from my present mooring and they have wifi. Perhaps i should try an antenna to maybe use the wifi signal. This problem is absolutely frustrating and annoying. It just seems network providers cant provide accurate info on signal strengths in various areas of the country. Would a newer dongle help or must i keep buying equipment and cross it off the list when it dosent work.I would happily pay to have this sorted out as already stated ," this is driving me nuts".Surely some boater must have cracked this by now lol.

 

Thats strange, we're probably less than a mile from you as the crow flies. We are using on3 with a mifi unit. We've been in exactly the same position for ages, the new mifi 3 dongle has worked fine for 3 months, a couple of weeks ago it began dropping out and has got progressively wors, yesterday over 15 times we were disconnected for over 5 minutes. I already had a phone copmplaint with 3 2 weeks ago. I also sent an e-mail last night threatening to drop out the contract. I've heard nothing back, but we haven' been disconnected once so far today, probably the first time in 3 weeks we've had an un-interrupted service. I'm wondering if were sharing the same mast and there's times it cant cope.

 

BTW we now have a Vodophone on the boat as 3 mobile won't work inside the boat and weak outside, we get a full bar phone signal inside the boat with Vodophone.

 

We're SN12 6RJ

Edited February 25, 2013 by Julynian

[GoodGurl]

looks like you only have one mast there, this maybe why you are having problems, try this link HERE just zoom into the area where you are, i use it all the time to determine where i moor, hope this helps

[Ex- Member]

looks like you only have one mast there, this maybe why you are having problems, try this link HERE just zoom into the area where you are, i use it all the time to determine where i moor, hope this helps

 

It must be really close to us, some warehousing might be blocking the view, I'll take a walk tomorrow but it must be within 500 metres.

I's owned by Vodophone so would our 3 signal be coming from the same mast?

 

don't know how it all works.

 

Good site for finding masts though, real handy cheers!

[GoodGurl]

i'm sure all phones work on all mast's just a different degree of signal, depending on it being your provider or not.

[PoppyDoogle]

Its driving me nuts. Im moored at Foxhangers SN101SS and use a vodafone K3565 dongle. Its always been slow and lately it seems to be getting worse. It now drops out at least 6 times a night, a few months ago it never dropped out? I use the dongle with a 1mt lead at a window. I just tried a 3mt lead out of the window taped to a post above roof height. Its even worse , dropping out and then telling me "no device", ? However it connects to 3G which i assumed would be better? Caen hill marina is only about 100mts away from my present mooring and they have wifi. Perhaps i should try an antenna to maybe use the wifi signal. This problem is absolutely frustrating and annoying. It just seems network providers cant provide accurate info on signal strengths in various areas of the country. Would a newer dongle help or must i keep buying equipment and cross it off the list when it dosent work.I would happily pay to have this sorted out as already stated ," this is driving me nuts".Surely some boater must have cracked this by now lol.

 

 

Hi Talisman just a thought but we use Vodafone dongles in our work & need good connections & started getting the same problem. We have found that buying the 'older' dongles (we are using ones with a USB plug on awire from the case) & putting the new sim card in them we don't loose the signal. Might be worth a try as they can be bought foe a cpl £ on e-bay

[Chris Pink]

Its driving me nuts. Im moored at Foxhangers SN101SS and use a vodafone K3565 dongle. Its always been slow and lately it seems to be getting worse. It now drops out at least 6 times a night, a few months ago it never dropped out? I use the dongle with a 1mt lead at a window. I just tried a 3mt lead out of the window taped to a post above roof height. Its even worse , dropping out and then telling me "no device", ? However it connects to 3G which i assumed would be better? Caen hill marina is only about 100mts away from my present mooring and they have wifi. Perhaps i should try an antenna to maybe use the wifi signal. This problem is absolutely frustrating and annoying. It just seems network providers cant provide accurate info on signal strengths in various areas of the country. Would a newer dongle help or must i keep buying equipment and cross it off the list when it dosent work.I would happily pay to have this sorted out as already stated ," this is driving me nuts".Surely some boater must have cracked this by now lol.

 

Chances are you're sharing with a dozen liveaboards in the marina, get home shove the iPlayer on and the network can't cope. It's becoming more and more common ( how many smartphones / dongles come online every day?).

 

Now the 4G contracts have been sold there's unlikely to be any further improvement - read investment - in 3G.

 

As Lady M says get a selection and swap among them. 3 should work there but Julyian won't thank you for snaffling some of his iPlayer bandwidth.

 

i'm sure all phones work on all mast's just a different degree of signal, depending on it being your provider or not.

 

Not true. Some masts are shared but not many. To ofCom site gives details.

[Hawkmoth]

After some years of struggling with an Orange phone and dongle we changed to 3. So far it's been very good, except at the end of last year it all went very poor. A call to 3 and I was told they were upgrading a local mast and service would be resumed at the end of the month.

As promised it came back and all is well again.

We have traveled quite a bit through the system and find 3 to be well covered.

Bob

[nb Innisfree]

I stand to be corrected but I believe 3 no longer share masts, it's been a year or two since 3 gave up 2g backup from Orange and went 100% 3g (that was their original intent hence the name but they then lacked enough masts of their own) This was when Orange joined with TMobile.

[Ex- Member]

I stand to be corrected but I believe 3 no longer share masts, it's been a year or two since 3 gave up 2g backup from Orange and went 100% 3g (that was their original intent hence the name but they then lacked enough masts of their own) This was when Orange joined with TMobile.

 

According to the off com site, there's only one mast in my location, it's owned by Vodophone and we're on 3 , maybe the next nearest mast is a 3. I'm not sure what kind of range these masts can deliver.

[Chris Pink]

I'm not sure what kind of range these masts can deliver.

 

line of sight

 

the 3 mast is in Bowerhill. Because it's the flatlands they should have a good range.

 

Vodafone would be good where you are but their data is too expensive for video.

Edited February 25, 2013 by Chris Pink

[bottle]

Next nearest are O2 and Orange located at Bollands Hill and the 3 is further away at Bower Hill area

 

 

http://sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/search

[Lady Muck]

Ive got a t mobile sim and I've had the fastest connection speeds with them, out of all of the sims that we have. For some reason it works brilliantly on the upper Thames where I cant even connect with the other 2 sims. 3 works most places but if you do lots of downloading or uploading it can be unreliable, constantly disconnecting. Vodafone is really expensive but it wont disconnect you half way through an upload but we are convinced that there is something fishy with the usage - we seem to burn through our data allowance when uploading.

The only sim I dont have is 02.

Agree with Chris, line of sight affects your signal - hills, trees, windy stormy weather can all affect it. Worst place we've been for connecting or attepting to connect being the more remote parts of the Oxford Canal. I'm the one standing on my roof swearing at my laptop because I'm trying to do a big upload for a client.

[Chris Pink]

 

Agree with Chris, line of sight affects your signal - hills, trees, windy stormy weather can all affect it. Worst place we've been for connecting or attepting to connect being the more remote parts of the Oxford Canal. I'm the one standing on my roof swearing at my laptop because I'm trying to do a big upload for a client.

 

Been there, done that.

 

(shall we design a t-shirt?)

[Lady Muck]

We could but we'd get into trouble for profanity.

[loubyscooby]

I too had a problem where for no reason Vodafone signal kept dropping and the connection had got so slow I was getting timed out so spoke to them and they said that my SIM had not updated correctly for a few months so they suggested that I take the SIM from the dongle, put it in a phone and then connect to either Google or Vodafone live site and then put it back it the dongle. Connection is now back to what is was before and I haven't lost the signal yet.

Edited February 25, 2013 by loubyscooby

[Lady Muck]

Yes this is a common thing with Vodafone. Having to update the sim on the network.

 

The other thing I've noted is not all dongles are the same, as Goodgurl noticed - I had a really 'dodgy' dongle (ooer missuz) a couple of years ago, had it looked at, they couldn't find anything wrong with it, it was *just* that device, it was lousy, wouldn't work on a long lead, weak connection etc.

 

We prefer to use our Vodafone wifi over our 3 mifi because the 3 device that we have is not so great quality, signal isn't so strong when we use that one and it keeps dropping out, doesn't happen nearly as much when the 3 sim from that device is in the Vodafone wifi. It's also a faff when the signal does drop out, to reboot you have to hold this fiddly little button in.

[smileypete]

I'm the one standing on my roof swearing at my laptop because I'm trying to do a big upload for a client.

If the dongle has an antenna socket maybe try a panel antenna if a decent connection is really important.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/150722641981

 

Cheapest way to do 02 would be one of their giffgaff sims with a gigabag addon. TMobile you can get a gig for 99p if you don't mind jumping through a couple of hoops.

 

cheers, Pete.

~smpt~

Edited February 25, 2013 by smileypete

[OldGoat]

Because we only use mobiles when we want to make a call.... and dongles when we're on the boat, that we go PAYG, which gives me a chance to experiment.

Over the years I have found consistently that:-

 

"3" gave the most reliable and available connection,

followed by tmobile (didn't bother with orange)

and Vodafone were a poor third.

 

3 is nice to use because you always have a connection to their site - even when your card has expired, so you can top up.

tmobile is reasonable as you can send a text from the control panel to top up and choose a day/week/month purchase.

Vodafone is awful, the software keeps crashing out unless you're in a good signal area - where it drops the connection. Shame as I've a stock of SIMs that don't expire

OTOH Voda give good coverage for 'phones and cheap calls can be had from ASDA.

 

The K3565 - similar to an E160 are old dongles and not hugely sensitive

E122 is better

and E353

all can be unlocked easily the first for free and a small charge for the other two.

 

I find I get a better signal with an external aerial and it's easier than bunging the dongle in a window. Sometimes it makes the difference between an usable signal or not at all. When the area signal is good then the aerial adds little or nothing.

 

Hope the above is useful or of interest to folks.

[Lady Muck]

If the dongle has an antenna socket maybe try a panel antenna if a decent connection is really important.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/150722641981

 

Cheapest way to do 02 would be one of their giffgaff sims with a gigabag addon. TMobile you can get a gig for 99p if you don't mind jumping through a couple of hoops.

 

cheers, Pete.

~smpt~

 

Thanks Pete, I might do that to get an 02 sim. I did have an antenna but I sold that with the dongle that fitted it as we use mifi now, due to having an ipad. My friend who moors below a really tall building in central London had my antenna and she says it really has made a difference to her signal strength.

[IainW]

we have a spare 3 mifi dongle if you want to borrow it to try. pm me if you'd like it talisman :-)