O2 Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband

...with the choice of either O2 or O2 and as I didn’t want to be tied into a contract I decided to go down the Pay As You Go route. Therefore this review is going to focus on my experience of using O2 Pay As You Go Mobile Internet.

To access the mobile internet I firstly needed to purchase a dongle, which cost a fairly reasonable £24.99 but did not come with a data allowance. Installation of the dongle was a fairly painless procedure, and ...
...me to the O2 Mobile Broadband site where I could choose and pay for a data package. There are currently three different options for purchasing data from O2, daily, weekly or monthly. The daily option costs £2 and allows 500MB of downloads, the weekly costs £7.50 for 1GB and monthly is £15 for 3GB. I personally went for the monthly option and while the payment process was easy and used secure pages (https), it’s worth noting that you have to have ... more

Due to BT’s stupid policy of not allowing Broadband through their Pay & Call line (even when there’s plenty of credit) the only way I could connect to the internet was to go down the mobile internet route. As a mobile internet connection is only as good as the mobile network signal I was left with the choice of either O2 or O2 and as I didn’t want to be tied into a contract I decided to go down the Pay As You Go route. Therefore this review is going to focus on my experience of using O2 Pay As You Go Mobile Internet.

To access the mobile internet I firstly needed to purchase a dongle, which cost a fairly reasonable £24.99 but did not come with a data allowance. Installation of the dongle was a fairly painless procedure, and once it was installed, Internet Explorer (yuck) opened and directed me to the O2 Mobile Broadband site where I could choose and pay for a data package. There are currently three different options for purchasing data from O2, daily, weekly or monthly. The daily option costs £2 and allows 500MB of downloads, the weekly costs £7.50 for 1GB and monthly is £15 for 3GB. I personally went for the monthly option and while the payment process was easy and used secure pages (https), it’s worth noting that you have to have a credit or debit card to pay for access. Now this seems very strange to me as I’m sure that the majority of people using a Pay As You Go Service are actually less likely to have one of these cards and as I far as I can tell there is no other way of topping up.

As soon as payment was made I had to close IE and disconnect from the internet (using the installed O2 connection manager) and as soon as I reconnected I was indeed online. O2 states that the maximum connection speed is 3.6 Mbps so I should have a connection that, while not the fastest, is more than able to cope with basic browsing. Unfortunately this is rarely, if ever, the case, even with full signal browsing is a slow affair with my connection speed rarely topping 0.5 Mbps and occasionally going as low as 0.05 Mbps, which is comparable to a dial-up connection. There are also regular periods when I cannot open up websites even though the connection manager will tell me that I am connected with an excellent signal. Disconnections are also a regular feature, with there being no real rhyme or reason as to why or when they occur. Then there are the times when I simply cannot connect at all, which happens at least once a week and can last all day.

The monthly download limit of 3GB, originally seemed quite generous until I actually started using the internet. Every page opened eats into this allowance and with automatic updates switched on it didn’t take long for me to receive a message telling me that I only had 150MB left. To be fair O2 do advertise approximately how much browsing and downloading you will be able to do with the allowance, but even so I was shocked when I used the first monthly allowance in less than two weeks. I’ve now learnt that it’s not a good idea to download MP3s, or watch videos online, but even with solely using my allowance to browse I find that I easily use a month’s worth within three weeks. Luckily I don’t have to wait for the month to finish before topping up again and don’t end up spending a week off-line. I do feel that it would be far more accurate if, rather than a monthly package, they simply sold data allowances as I can‘t see anyone managing to make 3GB last a month.

As well as the mobile internet, I can also access O2’s wi-fi network, without any limits to downloads through their ‘Cloud’ network (and BT Openzone). I’ve not done this with this computer, it’s a PC and rather difficult to carry down to the nearest hotspot. But I have previously used the Cloud network with an old laptop and it seemed to work quite well with rather fewer disconnections than I experience with the Mobile Broadband. As well as Pay As You Go, O2 offers their Mobile Internet through a monthly contract, with two different data allowances (3GB/10GB at £14.69/£29.38). From what I can gather you are then charged an amount per MB if you go over these allowances. I don’t know exactly how it works with the contract, but warning is normally given that I am coming close to using my data allowance, I’m assuming the same warning is given that you’ve 150MB left and when the allowance is used.

So am I recommending O2 Mobile Broadband? Well if, like me you have no other choice, then I suppose it does the job. It just doesn’t do it very well. Connecting to the internet can be very hit and miss and is often incredibly frustrating. The actual connection speed is normally far below that advertised, disconnections are a regular annoyance and the data allowance is pathetically small. Added to this is the fact that if you are using the Pay As You Go option then you need a credit or debit card to top-up your account, which makes life harder for the very people that PAYG is normally designed to help. But until BT either changes it’s policy on accessing broadband through their Pay & Go line or my years up and I can go on to a ‘normal’ telephone connection, I’m going to have to put up with my slow and unreliable O2 Mobile Broadband. 

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