Experience with mobile broadband?

[Syt]

I was wondering if any of you guys have experience with mobile broadband?

I currently have cable, 150Mbit, plus cable tv. Thing is, the building I'm in has pretty bad wiring, so since recently I have quite some issues with my connection. TV has pretty much died, and the internet modem needs to be rebooted in the morning and the PC left running during the day to maintain a connection. I forgot about it yesterday and spent three hours at night to get online and finally called it quits.

I already had a tech person from my provider having a look - he said things in my apartment are fine, though he changed the boxes and outlets for good measure to be on the safe side. I would change to a different provider; unfortunately the one I'm with has pretty much a monopoly in Vienna, unless you have a phone landline connection which my apartment hasn't.

Problem is within the house's wiring it seems. The other parties in house I talked to replied, "Yeah, that's why we have a satellite dish." Seems I'm the only cable customer in the building, so I'd probably have to pay any repairs on my own as there'd be no agreement among the tenants/owners to get things done for just one person.

I've considered going to mobile internet (USB stick or dedicated WLAN router, our poviders in Vienna offer both). Test reports say that stable 4-5MBit can realistically be expected - which sounds fine, considering I don't download as much as I used to and use the web for browsing/online gaming and the occasional games download. Data limit for most deals is 30-40GB/month, then the connection gets throttled to 128kbit. I was a bit put off, though, that all tests I read for the various providers felt it necessary to point out that the connection was stable - is this so unusual on mobile broadband?

The alternative is to stick it out for a few more months. I plan to move places sometime around April/May/June, because the energy costs in my current apartment are way too high (old building, badly insulated, literally a gas stove for main heating).

Thanks for any comments!

[Grey Fox]

150mbit!

*falls off the god damn chair*

[HVC]

150mbit!

*falls off the god damn chair*

i have a 30mbit/sec line, but it rarely hits that unless i'm on like a speedtester site since no one uplaods at that speed

[Grey Fox]

I have 5 & it's going to get more expensive.

[Syt]

I can usually download from Steam at 3 megabyte/s, Gamersgate often reaches 7 MB.

[viper37]

Max speed is 7, IIRC, and there's no way I achieve that in real world conditions.

[derspiess]

I had kicked around the idea of using Sprint's WiMax 4G as my internet connection at home, as I used to get a strong, reliable signal from the 2nd floor of my house.  I could reliably get 7Mb/s down and 1 up, and often better.

That changed recently, and I can't get Sprint to admit they made any changes.  Given how they're in the process of abandoning WiMax for LTE as their 4G solution, I don't expect it to ever get any better for me.  My cable internet speed has gotten significantly better recently and has always been pretty reliable.

[Vricklund]

I've been thinking about making the switch to 4G as well. The price is about the same as I'm paying now for my landline but I'm not exactly thrilled about this download limit thing. Has anyone tried online gaming on 4G? They say latency is a lot better on 4G than 3G?

On the other hand, my ISP just upgraded their net from 100Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s so the lower speed may come down a bit in price.

[Pishtaco]

I've been using it for a month while my fixed line is being installed. For while it would keep dropping out for a few seconds, but that seems to have resolved itself now; probably I've got the computer in a better place.

I've got a 5G limit so I haven't tried doing anything fancy with it. When I called to cancel, the guy said he would increase it to 15G at the same price.

[derspiess]

I've been thinking about making the switch to 4G as well. The price is about the same as I'm paying now for my landline but I'm not exactly thrilled about this download limit thing. Has anyone tried online gaming on 4G? They say latency is a lot better on 4G than 3G?

For me, 4G latency is a little better than that of 3G.  Neither is anywhere near as low as what I have with my cable internet connection.  I'm on Sprint, which uses WiMax and EvDO for 4G & 3G respectively and I'm guessing it's LTE and UMTS or whatever in your area so my experience might not be applicable.