- Tuesday, 9 February 2010
- INQ Mobile
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This press conference is duller than the dreams of Mike Capellas - Doctor Spinola
Virgin launches a new dongle
SOME PEOPLE can't even say the word without suppressing a giggle, but Virgin Media has launched a new dongle.
The dongle is designed to boost mobile broadband speeds up to 7.2Mbps, or as Virgin would have it, making them "super fast". The proof is in the surfing, of course, and we have not managed to get our hands on one yet, but Virgin claims that the new speed, twice that of its previously released 3.6Mpbs dongle, will give its users improvements in their email checking, streaming media and Internet browsing experiences.
Other options include a data allowance of either 1GB or 3GB per month. Speed improvements will let users catch up on their favourite TV shows and Youtube clips with "less buffering and stuttering", according to the firm.
Users get the choice of one month rolling contracts or an 18-month one. Users that take the rolling contract have to commit to two months of use before moving onto the more flexible tariff. This costs £8 per month for the 1GB version and £12 per month for 3GB. The 7.2MBps USB modem costs an additional £35. The same prices apply for the 18-month contract, except those lucky punters get to snap up the modem for just under a tenner. People who are not already Virgin Media customers have to pay a couple of quid extra per month.
Graeme Oxby, executive director of mobile at Virgin Media, said, "We're thrilled to be offering this faster mobile broadband to our users. If you're not at home or near a wireless connection, mobile broadband is the best way of staying connected on the move and we're delighted to be making this a speedier, more pleasant experience for our customers." µ
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Kinda Niffy that their new "Wireless" product is now faster than their old "Fibre Optic" product!....
I wonder if Users who check email more than once per hour get a 75% reduction in speeds, hmmm.
... but I'll stick with my Vodafone PAYG stick thank you. 1.5p per megabyte with no expiry worth worrying about, for ~£35 up front. OK, it's only 3.6Mbps, but we all know no-one even gets that much speed, and as I understand it, the 7.2Mbps products don't work any magic to accelerate connections - it's only the theoretical and never-attained limit that's raised.
...Now that Virgin are spying on their users by virtue of being a media industry patsy... Bt learned their Lesson when they tried thisa shit, one can only hope NTL(virgin) will as well, sooner rather than later.
I just thing no country dummer than Indonesia Telecom Flagship, Telkomsel. It lauch Flash (a product name) next gen HSDPA+ 21 mbps with a 500 MB fair usage (which will be out for less than 3 minute). I like to call it "The new and improved" Telkomsel Flash Real HSDPA+ 6 KB/s Unlimited that is limited. They should give a give a fair usage that will not out in usage of 1 week 24/7 with 21 mbps. If we use only 6 hours (1/4 day) we get 21 mbps for a full months. But the stupid GM is just like 500 MB fair usage. He things that unlimited internet is only good to do so by using a old cheap outdated handphone with 500 MB is too much.
My wife watches Youtube a lot. According to my router log, our bandwidth total comes out to roughly two Gigabytes per day. As far as I can tell, this is mostly youtube, there is no peer-to-peer traffic involved at all.
So if Virgin offers 3 GB per month, this is laughable. It needs to be 3GB per day, at least.
7.2!!! Oh really.
To be honest most 'mobile warriors' would be more then happy with a rock solid 1Mbps connection rather than all this flakey hi-speed nonsense.
Note to providers, forget the theoretical lab conditions top speeds and concentrate on improving the 'low end grunt'
Less HP and more torque (read stability).
Hey Richard, how about rolling in your fiber optics into Canary Wharf? I thought you were a smart guy and yet you are missing such a big opportunity, as more and more houses/flats are developed in the area.
Bugger going with VM for MobileBB, "comes with added DPI and throttling..." :\
I will stick with Three3G for my mobileBB, I do actually get the full 3.2Mbps which is surprising! Still, it won't stop me using my 8Mbps ADSL anytime soon.
And will Virgin be deeply inspecting your packets, I wonder?
its seems to me like reg seems to be a place to announce non important messages to the world. commonly known as adverts