How to Choose the Right Mobile Broadband Solution for you

There are many reasons why you might prefer mobile broadband over the stay-at-home variety. You may not have a landline in the house (which you need for ADSL) and you don’t want to connect one just for Internet access. You may not want to go through the expense and hassle of getting ADSL or cable Internet connected and want something you can simply plug into your computer and have up and running in five minutes. Or you may just be after an Internet connection to use on your notebook while you’re out of the house, such as while you’re commuting, travelling between job sites, sitting at a cafe or studying at school.

The good news is that mobile broadband is cheaper than ever. You can now get over a gigabyte of data a month (which is enough if you only need to check email occasionally and look up the odd web page) for less than what you’d pay for lunch at the local cafe, and there are lots of options for medium and high volume usage as well. The convenience of mobile broadband is that you can use it wherever you can get a mobile phone signal – simply plug the USB modem into your computer, fire up the desktop software, and you’re good to go!

Carrier speeds

Of course, there are downsides to mobile broadband that need to be considered as well. As far as connection speeds go, it’s a lot slower than ADSL or cable, and you’re generally looking at between 350kbps (kilobits a second) and 1.5Mbps (megabits a second). While this won’t make a huge difference for loading web pages and accessing email, it does become noticeable for streaming YouTube and downloading large files.

Cost per gigabyte

Price is a big factor as well. Mobile broadband is a lot more expensive than ADSL or cable when you take into account the amount of data you get at each pricepoint. For example, you may get 6GB for, say, $39.95 on a mobile broadband plan with a free USB modem, or as a comparison 120GB for $49.99 on an ADSL2+ or cable plan with free connection and delivery. Broken down into the cost per gigabyte, then, you’re paying $6.66 per gigabyte for mobile broadband and 42c per gigabyte for ADSL/cable for a significantly faster connection speed.

The huge value disparity is why many people opt for a mobile broadband connection to complement rather than replace an ADSL or cable connection at home, especially if downloading music and movies, online gaming or VoIP (making phone calls over the Internet) makes up a large percentage of the household’s Internet usage.

Check your habits

There are lots of factors to consider when choosing a mobile broadband plan. First, you’ll need to have a good idea of what your Internet usage patterns are like. If you only use it occasionally and stick to activities like checking your email and reading the online news, then you can get away with an entry-level plan between 1-2GB. If you use the Internet for an hour or so a day and frequent social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube, 5-6GB of data a month would be more appropriate. Finally, if you download a lot of files and consider yourself a power user, 10-12GB a month would suit your needs.

Contract types

Naturally, the monthly cost of the plan is closely tied in with the amount of data that’s included, although the pricetag will differ depending on whether you go on a prepaid, month-to-month or long-term contract. Prepaid mobile broadband offers the most convenience, and there are plans available that offer you more than 30 days to use up all the data – a good option if you’re not sure how much data you need each month. At the opposite end of the spectrum are long-term contracts for 12 or 24 months, which offer more data at each price point and usually include a free USB modem.

In between prepaid and contract is the best option: month-to-month contracts, which typically have the same priced plans as the longer contracts, only without getting tied in for one or two years. Not all carriers offer this option, but given the rate at which mobile broadband prices are falling, it’s worth looking for as you’ll be able to move to another plan without penalty as soon as there’s a better deal.

Modem choice

You’ll also need to consider the devices that you want to use with the mobile broadband service. Traditionally, this was limited to desktop and notebook computers, as the modem had to be plugged into a USB port and use software that was only available for Windows and Mac computers. However you can now get Wi-Fi modems that don’t physically connect to the computer. Instead, they create a wireless network that any Wi-Fi equipped device can connect to, including smartphones, games consoles, iPads, Blu-ray players and TVs. If you have non-computer devices that you want to connect to the Internet, many ISPs sell Wi-Fi modems to go with their mobile broadband plans. The other option is buying a third party Wi-Fi modem like the NetComm MyZone.

Before you settle on a plan from a particular carrier, check whether the areas that you want to use the mobile broadband service in are actually covered by that carrier. If you live in a metropolitan area, you should be covered by all four networks, but coverage is spotty in the rural and regional areas, and you may find that your options are limited to only one or two providers in some areas.