My mobile BB with Virgin Media is generally fcuking awful, and changing the dongle today didn't help one bit... however, since the extender cable (so that you can access a nearby USB port once the dongle's in one presumably) fell out of the new box, I decided to give it a go out of curiousity.

It actually seems to be speeding things up , this thing is just an extended cable seemingly, but I thought I'd pass the info on

Maybe I was getting some sort of interference from the dongle's proximity to the port but I doubt it, as I had acheived higher speeds previous to the recent crawl

Thanks for that idea - I'll give it a try later.

The cable allows you to move the dongle away from the electrical interference generated by the computer itself, so it can get a cleaner signal.

It also allows you to position the dongle better (higher, closer to a window etc.).

It is there for exactly this purpose, not as an extender for other devices.

Just looking at the new manual I got yesterday, this one actually says about the 'cable extender' (their words) helping with the signal, where the other one didn't, otherwise I'd have tried it ages ago! It still doesn't even mention the potential computer interference. The main reason for thinking it was just an extender was that my signal had been what you'd actually expect up until the last week...

The guy on the phone at VM didn't think to mention it either - I suspect quite a lot of people take it at face value

Lol. I don't think I got a USB cable extension with my dongle (t-mobile) but I used to extenders and hung the dongle off the window handle where I had near-perfect reception. Dongles are like mobile phones - there are certain places in buildings where the reception's going to be better.

get some bluetack find the best place for reception bluetack into position all's well that end's well.