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T-Mobile mobile broadband

T-Mobile overview

  • T-mobile broadband contracts give you unlimited browsing: there's a fair usage policy of 3GB but no extra charges if you exceed this, althoughyour downloading/streaming video could be restricted at peak times.
  • As well as PAYG, you can now pay up front for 3 months' data preloaded on a PAYG dongle.
  • T-Mobile's mobile broadband deals are all available on business contracts
  • Customers on PAYG or pay monthly broadband get access to the T-Mobile Night in offer, which gets you a movie/game rental and snacks for £5
  • Free delivery for online orders

Best selling T-Mobile mobile broadband deals

T-Mobile Broadband Genie Road Test results

T-Mobile Road test
T-Mobile Huawei 615 dongle
Downloads
rating -3 stars3 stars
Uploads
rating -4 stars4 stars
Most stable
rating -4 stars4 stars
Coverage
rating -4 stars4 stars
Feelgood factor
rating -3 stars3 stars
Dongle software
rating -3 stars3 stars
Overall rating
rating -4 stars4 stars

May 2011

2011 Awards: Best Coverage Winner

This was a disappointing year for T-Mobile's new Huawei 630 dongle after last year's strong overall Dongle on the Move victory. Perhaps it should have stuck with ZTE? While it managed to keep hold of its Best Coverage award, it was otherwise a barren year for the former champion.

But it was far from a negative trip. T-Mobile's software fell just short of being placed, thanks to really good recent upgrades from a couple of its rivals. The same can be said for stability, where it was only just outperformed by Orange for runner-up. It was a shame it was tough to get it going again when it did lose its signal though. This was a problem we complained of last year and it's very disappointing that this doesn't seem to have been addressed.

If we'd given a streaming award, T-Mobile would've been a strong runner-up in the category. However, generally slow speeds left it wanting in both the Best Downloader and Best Uploader categories. For many though, this wouldn't be an issue on the move. If you can happily listen to Spotify, watch low quality YouTube without too much buffering, then browse the web and check your email, many would say a dongle is doing its job. Odd though, that where we were complaining about erratic speeds from it last year, this time they were steady and consistent.

With T-Mobile's fantastic offer of no charges for going over your monthly download allowance (you may have your speed slowed though), it's still a dongle we would recommend. However, on this trip it simply wasn't in the same league for speed as the winners.

Overall analysis of the Mobile Broadband Genie Road Trip 2011

by Chris Marling May 2011

About T-Mobile

T-Mobile is seen as one of the old, reliable 3G mobile broadband operators: there isn't much to write home about on speed, but the connection is normally strong. It has recently been getting down with the kids through its highly successful 'Life's For Sharing' ad campaigns, but the core of its audience remains older and business customers looking for reliability over flashy. Importantly, it is also the only mobile internet provider that doesn't charge people excess fees for going over their agreed mobile internet usage cap: instead, customers will receive a series of letters if they abuse its fair usage policy, and perhaps a cap in speed.

It's 'steady Eddie' reputation nicely fits the old 'reliable' cliché about its parent company; it is a subsidiary of German firm Deutsche Telekom. It was previously known as Mercury One 2 One, the world's first GSM 1800 network when launched in 1993. It launched 3G services in 2003 and its hugely popular 'Flext' mobile phone tariffs in 2007. It was quick out of the traps with mobile broadband: UK customers could get mobile internet contracts from October 2006 and it was the first provider to launch pay as you go mobile broadband deals a year later. T-Mobile began to offer so-called 'free' laptop deals with mobile broadband contracts in January 2009.

T-Mobile signed a 3G network access agreement with 3 in 2008: at the time the largest of its kind worldwide (more recently trumped by a similar deal between O2 and Vodafone).

T-Mobile was crowned Broadband Genie Road Trip Awards Winner in 2010, taking the crown from Virgin Media (which uses its network anyway).

In the UK, T-Mobile integrated with Orange in July 2010. While keeping their separate identities on the high street, the combined networks were renamed Everything Everywhere. The long term plan is for a 'super-network' giving bigger and better coverage.

T-Mobile customer reviews

Show all 301 T-Mobile Mobile Broadband reviews»

  • neutral

    by womble at 11:15 on 4 Feb 2012Report abuse

    though i get issues with t-mobile dongle, i prefer it over any other due to the fact that after i go over download limit (which incidently i do within hours) i can still browse and do stuff for the rest of the month.
    the first dongle i had from them a few years ago was a much better deal (this being before they were bought out by orange, which may be the key here) as the download limit was 2 or 3 gb! much more realistic, sort of, BUT when you went over, the limitation only kicked in between 4pm, and midnight. meaning of course that you could keep your downloaders on and they would automatically start at midnight. and also you could buffer online video while you slept. sdaly when they got bought out by orange that all got stopped. which was a bit of a pi**er as it was the main selling point.

    noticed above THAT SOME FOLK HAVE ISSUES WITH SIGNAL LOSS! here is a fix:

    (there are two main types of manager window forms that t-mobile dongles can have depending on which make of dongle it is, but there is a way to do it with the one i dont have that has a mini manager window)..

    1. bring up your t-mobile broadband manager window
    2. click tools > options > (see list on left hand side) network > registration mode > set to manual > (below that it will say for eg t-,mobile uk 3G) > click refresh (list appears of available networks) choose either orange (or t-mobile if it was orange that came up)
    > click register, it'll verify, then you just click connect! do this anytime your signal gets stuffed!
    also of note is to click "network type tab just beside the reg' mode tab. but to make this part work u need to DISCONNECT! go in there and make sure (generally) that is is actually set to 3G only. you can freely change this to siut, just disconnect to make this section active, set it to , for eg, 3G and then reconnect. i've had BIG improvements just by knowing this.
    for some sad arsed reason the call centre folk wont tell you much of this, when they SHOULD< its your right and your dongle.

    my main issue is that their excuse for not letting you for eg view youtube once are over limit, is because the dongles arnt designed for heavy usage. this int quite true. i've had is EASILY running up to 2.5mb per second, and they say its merely for laptop mobile usage etc... well, folk watch youtube on virgin trains and thats a t-mobile connection.
    i would like to find a get-round for this. there is NO real reason why there should be a linit at all, as a dongle wont let so much traffic thru it anyhow.
    i think it'll be a matter of time before we get a ryan air of the dongle world.

    all said and done, i find it is the best deal, no other deal lets you continue to connect after your limit expires. and other networks like 3 keep disconnecting in the middle of important tasks ANYWHERE in the country. t-mobile GENERALLY isnt too bad that way. many of the complainers on that issue havnt spent much time on other network dongle to really know.

    best thing for t-mobile to do, is screw ornage and go back to the unlimited between midnight and 4pm.
    happy, but a little frustrated

  • neutral

    by womble at 11:01 on 4 Feb 2012Report abuse

    the person above who asked about gaming!!! here is my experience, and i sincerely hope no t-mobile staff are reading a steal the ability to do thi away from me...

    need for speed world (online driving game) first time you download the logon console and run it, it takes AGE (hours) to download the initial setup business, HOWEVER< once you let it go through that, each time only takes around 30 seconds for it to load the stuff it needs to initialise it.
    then when you click "enter world" it does take anywhere from 30secs to 2 minutes for the world to load, and a little bit of time each time you teleport to races.
    the game runs fine. occasionally wen driving very fast it seems you drive faster than the road loads, but i've had WORSE on a PS2 actually.
    IT WORK VERY WELL for need for speed world.

    also i use secondlife! it took me ages to get secondlife running with a dongle, and finally with t-mobile i find i can use secondlife when i am over my limit!!! cool
    however, some features disbale. i cant initiate instant messaging in it, some one has to message me first. but i can ask them to do so on public chat!
    i cant bring up folks profiles, but no big deal. and accasionally some worlds in secondlife take a hell of a long time to load. and in-world lag can really play mad tricks. but considering the tiny little huwai dongle, its really doing ok for its capabilities. secondlife is a humdinger anyhow.

    using msn wont always work after download limit, even though the above games can! so not sure why that should be, and most alternative msn clients (pijin, aMSN) wont work wen over limit at all.

    there do appear to be times when suddenyl and apparently unexpectadly the flow into your dongle speeds RIGHT up and you can do anything! so obviously at these times do, and grab all you can!! woopeee! then a few hours later BUMP, back to "normal".

    and remeber, ALL mobile broadband companies use huweii dongles, so rubbishing thse ones for many of the reasons above is a bit naff. experiment with the settings (keep a notebook to remember original settings incase you do a blooper) see what works, you wont harm it..

    and for folk who moan about constantly breaking dongles, i have had t-mobile dongles for a few years, and NO PROBLEMO! but when i visit friends with kids or teens, they move their setup around too often passing it around, andbumping the dongle while its in the USB port. this is just dumb, and you just cant blame the dongle for that kind of abuse. bl**dy hell.

    back to the point, GAMING..
    iof it is a flash game on a web page, it wont work (when over limit) but proper online games like need for speed world, and secondlife will! albiet clumsily, but give them a break!

    hope thesee types of connectors have competators soon so we start to get better and faster speeds, and that the carriers (t-mobile, 3, o2 etc) start to stop taking the piss and genuilny give us competative pricing...
    we can get FULL BROADBAND for our home PCs MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper than this, in fact UNLIMITED and mega MB speeds, so what REALLY is the excuse for the downside of mobile broadband... PHONES now have a better performance, and NO LIMITS like the dongles do (but this is company policy NOT the dongles performance, technically)

    very very glad i have my t-mobile, but really frustrated from time to time

  • neutral

    by lisa wilson at 13:20 on 29 Jan 2012 | registered | 1 postReport abuse

    i bought my tmobile dongle n i have tryd everything to unblock it but it just keeps saying it has sent me my activation pin wen it hasnt carnt evan get on the lottery sight coz its blocked

  • unhappy

    by andy at 21:34 on 25 Jan 2012Report abuse

    Absolutely terrible Dongle, ive had nothing buttrouble getting it back on when losing signal, i wouldnt recomend buying t mobile dongles at all. ive now bought one from 3 network, its great,no problems,and is fast too. Andy

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