Mobile Broadband on a Budget (or FREE!)

[Guest hecatae]

For myself, Three UK is saturated in my home location, barely get more that 28kbps a second download, but upload is 1mbps.

If I take my sim to work or elsewhere I get a healthy 5mbps download, 2mbps upload.

So for me, both Samba and Three UK are useless.

I've seen GiffGaff offer 3gb for £12.50 for 30 days, so going to test that.

[Guest ace1978]

The above is all good and well but how about piggybacking off of your own android phones network, which is completely free. All you got to do is share the network connection from your phones WiFi or blue-tooth,

Just do the following:

First you will have to pair your tablet to your phone make sure to turn on discoverable mode.

1. click settings

2. click more

3. click tethering and portable hotspot

4.click configure wifi hotspot

5. enter a network name of your choosing for exp:( my phone ) then chose a password click save

6. click portable wifi hotspot or blue-tooth tethering (which ever you want to run off of,( i find blue-tooth runs better when phone is next to my tablet).let it find and your phone, click connect.

Viola, you are now sharing your phones internet connection completely free using your phones data plan.

[Guest everett_psycho]

That's fine if you are on threes one plan and you might get away with it sharing an android phones network to another android device but it's actually against the terms of service, if I tether my phone to my laptop three will bill me for it.

I've ordered myself both samba and ovivo sims, the main reason is to give it a shot as my home broadband is woefully slow, if I use it a lot I might upgrade my main mobile to the one plan and use these sims as backup, but for an out lay of £12.50 it's a good way to see if I actually use the service before committing to a 12 month contract

[Guest hecatae]

vodafone red data gives me 2gb of data which I can tether if required, but it's hardly ideal

[Guest lineone]

"Having used the SIM whilst doing some test browsing on my Chromebook for a little while I can’t recall seeing any ads over and above the ones already on websites. And this was with Adblock extension purposely turned off."

according to the video, ads are shown on your mobile browser but i can't confirm this until my sim arrives :)

[Guest Zarch1972]

Looks like the price hike is now in force on Ovivo (SIM now £15), but you get the £15 back in credit when you sign up.

And they've also boosted the referral bonus from £2 to £3 per sign up. :)

[Guest PlaneMan]

Looks like the price hike is now in force on Ovivo (SIM now £15), but you get the £15 back in credit when you sign up.

And they've also boosted the referral bonus from £2 to £3 per sign up. :)

You can also refer yourself if you want another SIM, before you wouldn't get the £. Handy if you run more than one phone.

[Guest Zarch1972]

So from the replies, it appears that the T-Mobile PAYG SIM ONLY with 6 month Internet Booster is your best value PAID option.

Get your new PAYG SIM and put £10 of credit on it to activate, then buy a £20 Internet Booster that lasts 6 months with "unlimited browsing" (but subject to their Fair Use Policy for downloads)

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/price-plans/pay-as-you-go/boosters/

So works out £5 per month for the first 6 months (£10 + £20), then £3.33 for each of the subsequent months (£20 every 6 months)

Certainly looks a bargain to me. :)

[Guest everett_psycho]

So from the replies, it appears that the T-Mobile PAYG SIM ONLY with 6 month Internet Booster is your best value PAID option.

Get your new PAYG SIM and put £10 of credit on it to activate, then buy a £20 Internet Booster that lasts 6 months with "unlimited browsing" (but subject to their Fair Use Policy for downloads)

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/price-plans/pay-as-you-go/boosters/

So works out £5 per month for the first 6 months (£10 + £20), then £3.33 for each of the subsequent months (£20 every 6 months)

Certainly looks a bargain to me. :)

Can't you whack £20 on, activate it then use that to pay for the internet booster? Seems the first £10 would go to waste just sat on the account.

My samba and ovivo sims and dongle turned up yesterday, had a quick play but I'm impressed so far, I'll give it some more attention at the weekend as reception in our flat is patchy.

[Guest unrandomsam]

I've been using a PAYG sim from T-Mobile in my tablet for a while.

If you purchase £20 of topup, then you get a month's free internet: http://www.t-mobile....s-you-go/plans/

Then they do a 6 Month internet booster for £20:

http://www.t-mobile....you-go/boosters

So for £40 you can get 14 months of internet.

The tmobile sims intended for phones are not so good. (They mess around doing stuff like downgrading the quality of images and also trash downloads in the process). If you use a vpn or tunnel over ssh you can get around it.

[Guest unrandomsam]

So from the replies, it appears that the T-Mobile PAYG SIM ONLY with 6 month Internet Booster is your best value PAID option.

Get your new PAYG SIM and put £10 of credit on it to activate, then buy a £20 Internet Booster that lasts 6 months with "unlimited browsing" (but subject to their Fair Use Policy for downloads)

http://www.t-mobile....ou-go/boosters/

So works out £5 per month for the first 6 months (£10 + £20), then £3.33 for each of the subsequent months (£20 every 6 months)

Certainly looks a bargain to me. :)

You are only supposed to use them on phones. (Cannot get decent quality for jpg's in webpages even.) You can disable the accelerator but only on a proper mobile broadband sim.

[Guest everett_psycho]

Not sure if anyone else has had this with ovivo but I paid £10 for the sim on Sunday, activated today and seem to have £15 credit on the account, too late for people thinking about buying but might be worth checking for those who did buy

[Guest lineone]

don't ignore the ovivo loyalty bonus:

http://ovivomobile.com/255/ovivo-rewards/featured-promotions-1

top up £10/month (which is what i spend with giffgaff at the moment) for a year and you should end up with 300 free texts - 300 free minutes & 800mb free internet which once earnt will remain whether you top up again or not :)

[Guest hecatae]

just activated giffgaff in my huawei e5331 that I got for £46 from amazon, so much faster than 3 or samba

[Guest ezablade]

Cheers for this... just ordered a Samba sim (too tight to pay £15)

Started watching the highly informative adverts, ready to use the data up in the summer whilst on the many weekends away planned with the kids. Free internet so they can do homework etc. is worth a try. Will be ordering a mifi soon, as tethering the phone kills the battery too much. It's OK for a short period of use, but it won't survive all day. Also, can leave a mifi near the laptop/Nexus all the time, and not worry about taking the internet access with me when I go for a pint.

[Guest lineone]

so far so good.

everything promised has been delivered.

ordered ovivo sim last sunday, received it wednesday and transfered number on friday.

they also added £3 for transfering my number to ovivo and £3 for refering my wife.

as an added bonus, i'm now getting the best 3g performance i've ever had :)

thanks for the heads up on this :)

[Guest Zarch1972]

thanks for the heads up on this :)

Happy days, glad people have found it useful . :)

[Guest zombimuncha]

I'm using an MNVO called Vizz. It runs on Voda's infrastructure, and I get 10MB free per day as long as I keep my prepay balance over £2.

Sweet deal!

[Guest hecatae]

ran out of data on my giffgaff, onto ovivo

[Guest masterpfa]

My own personal take on this.

I purchased via Amazon, a 3 data only SIM which has a 3Gb allowance valid for 90 days. This cost the tidy sum of £10.50 , thank you very much. Only drawback obviously depending on your usage is although this SIM can be topped up, I would not be luckily enough to get it at the same rate, so I just buy a few SIM cards at a time and replace as and when required.

Everyone's usage is different, I mostly use Wi-Fi so this amount of data is fine for my uses.

[Guest lineone]

so why not get the samba sim instead?

£2-50 then watch a few adverts and get free data, job done :)

My own personal take on this.

I purchased via Amazon, a 3 data only SIM which has a 3Gb allowance valid for 90 days. This cost the tidy sum of £10.50 , thank you very much. Only drawback obviously depending on your usage is although this SIM can be topped up, I would not be luckily enough to get it at the same rate, so I just buy a few SIM cards at a time and replace as and when required.

Everyone's usage is different, I mostly use Wi-Fi so this amount of data is fine for my uses.

[Guest Zarch1972]

So a few weeks on, how are we all finding the service from Samba and Ovivo? I've no complaints on either.

I think its a no brainer to pick one of each SIM up as spares. :)

[Guest everett_psycho]

Liking it, they screwed up my ovivo so I'm on the phone plan but it's worked out well, shoved in my old phone that I've recommissioned as an mp3 player it gets left in aeroplane mode 99% of the time but it came to my rescue twice already when my three sim had no reception but ovivo did

[Guest lineone]

as a light mobile phone user the ovivo is perfect for me. i can't see any need for me to top up again :)

the samba card i've bought now resides in my orange san francisco and is used as a wifi hotspot, dongle, watching you tube videos, a sat nav and general surfin.

i'm saving £10/month with very little inconvenience.

thanks zarch and all contributors :)

[Guest gadgetshop]

I opted for samba, and in the 3 weeks I've had the sim I've managed to earn just under 800MB, just for having the adverts in a background tab for about 15mins now and again while I'm doing my normal daily surfing