Hi Guys When I got my iPad I did sign up to O2 3G here in the UK, but found it so slow it was really useless so stoped subscribing to them, is anybody in the UK using "3" for their 3G and is it any good as I need to find one that not just takes your money but does provide a usuable service.

I have used '3' on my iPad since day one. The advantage of '3' is that, as their name suggests, they have only a 3G network - so no EDGE or GPRS. Other legacy operators still have a significant proportion of their network basestations - particularly outside city centres - in 2G, which means GPRS and EDGE and very low data rates. Because '3' were a late entrant to the race, they didn't have any 2G licences, so they were never able to deploy 2G basestations and hence their network is all 3G meaning high-speed downloads everywhere - usually the 3.5G HSDPA service of several megabits per second, compared to GPRS and EDGE on, at most, a hundred or so kilobits per second.

Plus, '3' do an 'all you can eat' tariff, so no need to worry about how many GB you're using...

Tim

Originally Posted by iwchris

Hi Guys When I got my iPad I did sign up to O2 3G here in the UK, but found it so slow it was really useless so stoped subscribing to them, is anybody in the UK using "3" for their 3G and is it any good as I need to find one that not just takes your money but does provide a usuable service.

I can't argue with you too much, Chris. I use my 3G out in the field every day and the other day our power was out for four hours, so I kicked it on.

I hated it. Never was it so slow ~ I thought i would scream! My computer and my iPad are less than a half a second on each page, so fast!

And I noticed too that when I upload pictures through 3G to Photobucket, they are blurry.

Another Mod and I discovered this yesterday.

Originally Posted by Tim SPRACKLEN

I have used '3' on my iPad since day one. The advantage of '3' is that, as their name suggests, they have only a 3G network - so no EDGE or GPRS. Other legacy operators still have a significant proportion of their network basestations - particularly outside city centres - in 2G, which means GPRS and EDGE and very low data rates. Because '3' were a late entrant to the race, they didn't have any 2G licences, so they were never able to deploy 2G basestations and hence their network is all 3G meaning high-speed downloads everywhere - usually the 3.5G HSDPA service of several megabits per second, compared to GPRS and EDGE on, at most, a hundred or so kilobits per second.

Plus, '3' do an 'all you can eat' tariff, so no need to worry about how many GB you're using...

Tim

Thanks Tim for all that info, that is so helpful
Chris

Originally Posted by SweetPoison

Originally Posted by iwchris

Hi Guys When I got my iPad I did sign up to O2 3G here in the UK, but found it so slow it was really useless so stoped subscribing to them, is anybody in the UK using "3" for their 3G and is it any good as I need to find one that not just takes your money but does provide a usuable service.

I can't argue with you too much, Chris. I use my 3G out in the field every day and the other day our power was out for four hours, so I kicked it on.

I hated it. Never was it so slow ~ I thought i would scream! My computer and my iPad are less than a half a second on each page, so fast!

And I noticed too that when I upload pictures through 3G to Photobucket, they are blurry.

Another Mod and I discovered this yesterday.

I wonder just how much difference that there is between 3G services in the the US and ours here in the UK

The GSM and 3G standards are International Standards - otherwise a US GSM phone wouldn't work in the UK and vice versa. The real issue here is the prevalence of 3G versus 2G basestations and - when on 3G (which is a plethora of different modulation and encoding schemes) how many are actually implemented by the service provider.

The UK is relatively well served with coverage as a result of historical circumstance (another story for another day)....

Tim

How slow is slow? It's a pretty subjective term... If you have optical fiber supplying data to your house, then by comparison 3G would seem pretty snail like.

What do you get when you do a test at Mobile Speed test ? I'm in Canada and my provider's service is pretty good. It's not as fast as my landline DSL, but it is acceptable for day to day browsing and streaming music and talk from internet radio stations. I get a little over 1000 Kb/s... Here's my 3G result (on the 2 MB download).

Originally Posted by jwt873

How slow is slow? It's a pretty subjective term... If you have optical fiber supplying data to your house, then by comparison 3G would seem pretty snail like.

What do you get when you do a test at Mobile Speed test ? I'm in Canada and my provider's service is pretty good. It's not as fast as my landline DSL, but it is acceptable for day to day browsing and streaming music and talk from internet radio stations. I get a little over 1000 Kb/s... Here's my 3G result (on the 2 MB download).

That looks to be a good service judging by those figures, if I get that with my new Sim when it arrives tomorrow I will be very pleased, I will report back with speed results.
Chris