Today, I am in a village in Dorset. The iPhone registers no connection, and my T-Mobile broadband dongle is running on GPRS. It’s like an old 56K modem!

This is one of those villages which just stopped in some indeterminate time last century. We probably have 3 TV channels, all of which are black and white. Colour TV is some horrid idea in a lab somewhere in Alexandra Palace, and the Internet is some hellish nightmare from the future. The result: slow net access, but net access all the same.

Complete with sound effects? :p

The fax machine I sit next to at work makes those sounds!

There's no 3G reception in my village either, it's not exactly uncommon.

I continually flick between GPRS and 3G with VM's broadband dongle here in Belfast

The rest of my family struggle to even make phone calls in our house.

There is one room where you tend to get a solid signal, but as soon as you start to move around the house it gets shaky.

O2 have got it sorted though. I can happily make/receive calls all over the house, and even access the internet (very slowly).

People around here do my head in - they always moan about the lack of phone signal, but they were the ones who protested and complained against the phone companies' plans to install masts. The phone companies even changed their plans a few times, but no the old people know best.

On a related note, we had someone from fibre city come round last night and ask for a signature.

We are getting two fibre strands installed right into our house on 7th October.

Bought a 3G booster last week no signal to full signal all around the house. Marvellous.

Is there such a thing as a booster for a mobile broadband dongle do you know? My VM one has a connection point for some sort of antenna, Google hasn't helped much...

Don't know mine depends on a BB land line ................

Thanks anyway

Hahaha I had a similar issue.

When I moved into my current flat (almost exactly a year ago, as I'm in the process of moving out), I didn't realise I had virtually no reception on my phone (T-mobile). As a result, I also had no HSDPA/3G access on my T-mobile dongle. A webpage could easily take thirty seconds to load. It's amazing how complex webpages have become. Back in the past, everything used to be optimised for 56k viewing. Now if you don't have over 1meg BB, you're screwed.

This is why I got my phone line enabled and internet access. Which reminds me - I'd better let them know I'm moving out (tomorrow!).

Could I have some details for that?

There is a thread around somewhere CC. I think it was in TMP but could have been networking.

As requested.
http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/mobile-accessories/vodafone-access-gateway

That is quite clever. It seems to be a sort of WiFi router but uses 3G instead of WiFi.

Handy if you don't have WiFi on your phone.

CC