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From The Times

April 10, 2008

The 'dongle' - the end of home phones?

The advent of the broadband 'dongle' could soon make the home phone obsolete

Emma Lunn

If you fancy ditching your BT line and fixed broadband service and want to get online for as little as £10 a month, how about a dongle?

A dongle is a portable modem that plugs into the USB port of your laptop or computer and provides internet access via the 3G mobile network. Experts are hailing dongles (also known as mobile modems or USB modems) as the next big thing in broadband and say that they could even render the traditional landline obsolete.

This is because a dongle gives users high-speed internet access at home, as well as on the move, and means that they no longer need to pay for a broadband service via their home phone line. And if this is all you use your landline for - because all your calls are now made or received on a mobile phone - you could dispose of your BT line altogether, saving £132 a year in line rental charges alone.

In fact, with BT charging up to £124.99 for reconnection or to set up a new line when you move home, dongles could be a viable alternative for anyone who does not already have a BT line.

Rob Barnes, head of broadband and mobile phones at moneysupermarket.com, the comparison website, says: “One of the advantages of a dongle is that you do not need a fixed line or cable to surf the internet; you simply plug the device into the computer or laptop. This is great for those who are constantly on the move and need access to the internet away from the home or office.

“Dongles may also appeal to students, businessmen or those with a second home who want internet access but do not want to pay for a fixed telephone line or a wireless router, which you often have to purchase when subscribing to a broadband package.”

How much a dongle costs depends on the speed, download limit and length of contract. The higher the speed, the bigger the download limit and the shorter the contract, the more you will pay.

The cheapest dongle on the market at the moment is from 3, which offers speeds up to 2.8Mb and a download allowance of 1Gb a month for £10 a month. The device itself is free if you sign up for 18 months, but if you want to commit yourself for only a year, you will have to pay £49.99 upfront.

T-Mobile offers two tariffs, both of which include a free dongle. Web 'n' walk Plus costs £15 a month if you sign up for two years, or £29 a month on a one-year contract. The package has a download limit of 3Gb a month. Alternatively, Web 'n' walk Max has a bigger download limit of 10Gb, but is more expensive at £35 a month on a two-year contract, or £44 a month on a 12-month contract.

However, Michael Phillips, of Broadbandchoices.co.uk, another comparison site, cautions people not to be seduced by long contracts because he expects speeds to rise and prices to fall. “This is a new market, so it may pay to hold out,” he says. “Most big mobile operators and internet service providers are upgrading network infrastructures to provide mobile broadband. The technology exists to deliver speeds of more than 30Mb per second via mobile broadband, so this could be the death knell for fixed-line broadband.”

Whether Mr Phillips's prediction is sound or not, there is already plenty of choice for people who want to dispense with their landline.

Vodafone offers a range of mobile broadband dongles, the most popular of which is its USB modem, starting at £15 a month. The dongle is free if you sign up for two years for a speed of 3.6Mb, but if you want a faster speed (up to 7.2Mb) or commit yourself for a year, the dongle will set you back anything up to £99.

Orange, meanwhile, offers Orange Internet Everywhere for £15 a month on a two-year contract with a 3Gb limit. Between 1Gb and 3Gb a month will be enough for people who simply want to check e-mails and do light browsing, but not for those who want to download large or numerous files.

Both Vodafone and Three charge extra if you exceed your limit - £15 per Gb, or 10p per Mb respectively. T-Mobile does not charge customers extra if they exceed their monthly data allowance. Instead, customer services contacts them to discuss their usage and offer a different package, if necessary. It is also the only network to offer a pay-as-you-go dongle. The device costs about £99 and browsing costs a maximum of £4 a day.

“Although dongles provide cheap access to the Net, be aware that they will not suit everyone,” Mr Barnes says. “The modems offer slower speeds than fixed-line products, so dongles are best for people who only need to browse the web or check e-mails. And speeds can fluctuate depending on the number of people sharing the same signal in the area.”

You will also need to be sure that you can get a signal in your area. Vodafone covers most of the UK, T-Mobile's 3G network covers about 85 per cent of the country and 3 covers about 90 per cent.

Key questions

Check the data allowance and the charges for exceeding this allowance.

Is there an additional cost for the dongle?

What speeds can you expect to achieve?

Check the length of the contract. Do you really want to be tied in for two years?

Case Study - dongle to the rescue

Martha De Monclin, a 36-year-old PR executive, has just moved from Paris to Buckinghamshire and says that a dongle has been her “saviour” while she waits for broadband to be installed at her home.

She pays £15 a month for a Vodafone dongle with a 3Gb download allowance on an 18-month contract. Mrs de Monclin, above, says: “I lived in France for seven or eight years, then my husband got posted over here. I'm freelance and wanted to continue working through the move. I asked BT over a month ago to put a line into my house, but I am still waiting for that to happen.

“In the meantime, the only way I can work is to use a dongle and I bought one as soon as I arrived in the UK. It's OK but I live in an area without very good reception, so the connection comes and goes. Also, it's not as fast as normal broadband. However, it is a lot better than nothing and better than going to an internet café - I went once and thought it was awful.

“When my broadband is finally installed I will still use the dongle when I am out and about.”

we got shut of BT and its farcical rental , we got Vodafone dongle and its great . works everywhere i go , and i dont have to put up with BT and £35 inc broadband and line rental - Vodafone , slightly slower but always on at £15 - Yippee !!!

chris, dewsbury,

i used a vodafone usb modem, i dont see it as a replacement for adsl/cable and a well configured router.
The Alcatel Usb modem was unreliable, came with unresponsive software and hung off the back of the pc on a bit of wire asking to get broken (why not just a stick!)
ok for the odd email.

dan, maspalomas, spain

Some interesting and good points here particularly about download quota and blocking of Skype/MSN Messenger. Remember the saying, if it looks too good to be true it probably is! New toys are often oversold and are rarely the panacaea they claim to be. Wholesale replacement of landlines? I think not

Geoff, Chester,

I am on vacation in Poland right now and have bought pay-as-you-go SIM for Internet access (called "iplus simdata") . The cost? 7p per 1MB . Now, the problem with the dongle that I brought here with me is poor antenna power - the solution? Hook up my 3G/HSDPA phone over USB. Works like a charm.

Bronek, London, UK

decent bandwidth universally in europe ????

compared with france , BT is wonderful !!!!!
I pay £22/month for 512 [ max available ] PLUS £150 line rental ; go elsewhere ? monopoly position as in many areas [orange is 100% france telecom owned ];25p minute to report faults in their system!

slowspeed, gard,

i would love to get rid of my home phone line but as far as I can see I still need it for Sky and I'm sorry but I just can't live out my sky+ box.

Emma, London,

im using 3G "dongle" right now.

works perfect, i get upto 1.5Mbps which is fine for most things

i got a 18month contract for 3GB/month at £7.50pm (3G does half price for existing customers).

perfect for on the move net for less than £8 a month!

Tim, London,

This new technology is great when you are mobile and have no landline but I would not replace my BT broadband with one of these at home. I demonstrated the dongle to my father in law who was considering this technology to replace dialup and he went for BT once he'd seen eratic dongle performance.

John, York,

Just thought I'd mention that just about all 3G handsets support modem functionality as well as voice calling.
Unlike GSM, 3G handsets can make an receive calls while you are browsing or downloading data. While on the move this connection is not broken either, unlike GSM data connections.

Jason, London,

These "dongles" are presumably not NAT routers like wireless routers used fr broadband. A well configured wireless router provides good protection against hacking, worms and other attacks from the Internet. I hope those who use dongles realise that they need their firewalls turned on

Richard Hollis, Stourbridge,

Good, I can not wait to get rid of BT. I don't see why I have to pay for line rental for a phone we NEVER use. We are simply forced to have it to get online. The company is criminal. Just like the BBC, complete waste of money for a service that is servely under par

Ryan, London,

Get broadband access with virgin media - no phone line needed at all!

Bex, Bristol,

One thing that immediately strikes me is that 1Gb a month is nothing for any heavyweight use of the Internet and 3Gb is next to nothing. Browsing involves data transfer too, you know. Get a usage monitor app to see just how much data you download in a few hours browsing. You'll be surprised.

Laurence, London,

NO!!!! THey CAN'T get rid of landline telephones... I am hard of hearing, and it is almost impossible for me to telephone from my mobile phone thanks to the excessive background static! Landline, is the only way I can make calls, as independently as possible. Not even Skype can help me there...

Jennifer Grant, Luton, Bedfordshire, UK

Getting off BT is a godsend, especially if you don't like the idea of the soon to be implemented BT Webwise snooping on your web browsing habits. The Drawback with wireless is that your speeds will decrease over time as the mobile networks reach capacity. It's also not good for online gaming.

Kieron, London,

The last hope for 3G; and as long as the price comes down and download limits go up, I see no reason why it won't be a success.

Hassan Azam, Banbury , Oxfordshire, England

It's amazing the high percentage of comments left here attacking BT. Similarly, British Gas came in for a drubbing last year over gas prices and service charges .

You'd have thought that the former nationalised companies would have got their act together after all these years in the private sectr

MarkS, Leeds,

All the mobile suppliers are mentioned in this article except O2. I have used my O2 mobile for net access and it costs a fortune. When I asked the company recently whether it proposed similar deals to those mentioned in this article I firstly had some difficulty in explaining what I was talking about and then, when the penny dropped, an admission that the company had no such system nor, apparently, was one in the pipeline. I hope O2 catches up soon!

Roy, Chinnor,

Orange Home Max. Â£24 per month. No BT Line rental and gives you 8MB wireless broadband, free phone calls evening and weekend on your main phone and free calls all the time on a second phone plugged into your livebox and free calls to 30 countries. I have been with Wanadoo/Orange for years and this is the best deal I could find. Even better you get a 40GB download limit, on Tiscali you get 5GB! - I don't work for orange, but what a package!!

Tim, Dundee, Scotland

I have one of these from Vodafone No free calls voice though. Skype and MSN Messenger are blocked. Check the small print.

Rix, Newcastle,

Referring to a comment above, I thought that due to the regional development agency One NorthEast, every telephone exchange in Northumberland had been enabled for broadband?

If you're using a 'dongle' be sure to double check the charges for going over your limit. You can easily use 1Gb watching a couple of shows on the BBC iPlayer and, at Â£15 per Gb that could mean one hell of a shock at the end of the month.

To put that charge into perspective, websites (which also have to pay per Gb to provide data) pay as little as 50c (25p) per Gb of transfer.

Robert, Manchester,

Love to be able to use an alternative to BT but the mobile signal strength in our house is almost non-existent on all networks (even tho we live on the outskirts of a major city in Wales).
I'm having to pay Â£126 p y just to keep a phone line which only gets used a couple of times a week, its a real rip off.

Dave Edwards, Cardiff,

Wish they'd stop calling them 'dongles'. Dongles were a copy-protection system that plagued ordinary software users in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the word still has the same association for computer users.

JDunn, London, London

BT really is an awful monopoly. Their attitude to providing decent bandwidth as available universally in Europe is frankly disastrous for the UK (though in the short term, good for BT) and it is time their monopoly was broken. What's more their service is very expensive. Personally I would be delighted to be rid of them but unfortunately the one mobile signal around here is feeble and frequently crashes. So for the moment, I have to put up with our dinosaur monopoly.

Colin, shrewsbury,

Claims by providers to cover 85%, 90% or whatever should be viewed sceptically. It refers to people not land. Most of rural england gets no or poor signal, so its nto an alternative for people living in the country.

I had a vodafone one a couple years ago and couldn't even get a decent or regular signal in london (paddington) and none give you a chance to try the service and cancel say after a month f it cannot provide the goods (most can't).

Neil Murphy, cromer,

Shame that all those people, and I know of several, particularily in the wilds of Northumberland, who have had requests to BT for broadband flatly refused (I suspect on the grounds of we can't be bothered) will not be able to read this and say that it serves BT right for being so unhelpful and unfriendly!

Jenny, Birmingham,

I find it quite irritating that the report uses the term "dongle", as it provides no information about what it does. A dongle is NOT "a portable modem that plugs into the USB port of your laptop or computer". The term "dongle" simply describes a small device that plugs into a PC. There have been dongles for many different purposes, from keys for software through network connections. ICalling it a dongle is no more helpful than calling it a plug. Just call it a wireless USB modem. If you can't handle that, create an acronym - how about a WUB. Someone using one could then be called a WUBBER.

Christopher Roberts, Maidenhead, UK

T-Mobile isn't the only company offering Pay as you Go. Three also offer it. Â£69.99 for the modem, then the vouchers cost the same per month as contract customers - between Â£10 & Â£20 per month depending on how much bandwidth you want.

Speeds are variable, but generally not too bad provided you don't want to watch videos online. It won't be replacing my landline ADSL connection, but for someone with modest requirements, it is something they could consider

Jonathan, Reading, Berkshire

I'm a technophobe but I recently got a dongle and I'm very happy with it. I'm renting a brand new flat and BT wanted 150 quid for a first landline connection in spite of the buiding already being wired. No discount for having been a BT customer for almost two decades.

None of the phone plus internet packages was quite what I needed. Instead, I've got a good mobile contract (Orange) and separate internet modem from 3 with 3Gb x 12 months (usb modem included) for 15 quid/month.

So far, it has been good for work, surfing, email, messenger/chat and online banking. Not good enough for videos but I don't use that. I expect speed to improve in the next 12 months so by the time I need a new contract, there should be better choice.

Maybe when enough of us leave, BT will get its act together.

Em, Birmingham, England

Technology is finally making BT obsolete, after all their false promises during five years to provide me with broadband on their antiquated lines, I now have an alternative to the 56kbs vintage modems. I have already ditched my slow and expensive land line, who needs one now !

Richard George, Bristol, UK

Has anyone actually tried a dongle though? I bought one to use in Italy when I was on holiday just to collect my email.

The speed was SLOWER than an old dial up - probably no more than 20k compared to the old dial up modem speed of 56k or a normal broadband speed of 8mbs - or a snails pace in plain English.

How can the mobile phone companies be allowed to market this service as broadband when in reality in many parts of the globe it would be quicker to to use a telegram?

Lawrence, London, UK

I agree with Mark Etienne. Having been told it would cost me Â£100 to have a line reconnected BT tried to charge me double that (engineers hourly rate...) but "graciously" let me only pay the hundred when I pointed it out. I have decided I would try anything but go with them again and switched to someone else. I'm not going back if I can help it.

I am sceptical about broadband via 3G if only because of thoughts of capacity - if everyone starts using it will they be able to cope or will we be back to the landline broadband thing of UP TO a rate which is barely ever achievable.

Tom Vine, Newark, UK

This will be a godsend for everyone that is suffering from BT's disdain for their customers. Finally an alternative is on the way. I for one will vote with my wallet as soon as I get the chance.

It will take me a long time to forget being stung for 125 quid to switch-on an already-existing phone line and being strong-armed into revealing my bank account details to pay by Direct Debit by the exploitative additional charges on any alternative, even paying on-line which has no incremental cost.

Mark Etienne, cambridge, UK