Sorry about the extremely long time it has taken for me to reply to this, but here I am now. In response to Lesd, I am using Vodafone via a USB modem. By necessity this sits inside the boat (I doubt it is waterproof, the cable isn't long enough to reach outside, and as with all these devices they have no connection for an external antenna). So given that a narrowboat is a pretty good signal insulator maybe it is not surprising that I have such poor results. As an example I have been on a 15 day cruise over Christmas and New Year, and during that time I visited 1 location that had a 3g signal. Now admittedly it was an out and back cruise so I went everywhere twice, but I still don't rate that as very good. So much so in fact that I am now looking for an alternative to Vodafone. I have looked around the coverage maps for various providers and in my area and the one with the best coverage (or perhaps I should say best coverage map) is '3', not only that, but it is also much cheaper (£15pm for 3Gb, I am presently paying £25pm for the same allowance). The problem there is that I know full well that coverage maps have even have more artistic licence in them than estate agents house descriptions, so I wonder if anyone that uses '3' could comment on how good their coverage actually is, or possibly how good (or bad) the company is? On the same line of thought is there some kind of meter that you can buy that will accurately tell you what a particular area is like for signal strength? I am thinking a hand held, battery operated device with a signal strength gauge on it. I have searched for these online but have never managed to find one.