T-Mobile Web ‘n’ Walk USB modem
After spending many boring lunch breaks at work with no access to the Internet i decided it was about time i purchased a 3G modem for my laptop.
My provider of choice is T-Mobile as i already have an existing contract with them and have had no real problems in the few years i have been a customer of theirs.
When i visited the T-Mobile website to make an order for a 3G USB modem i was presented with various different plans and contract periods.
As i am a heavy Internet user i opted for the Web ‘N’ Walk Max plan as this has a fair usage policy of 10 gigabytes a month and allows access to VoIP and streaming services. This all comes for the fair price of £35 monthly for the max plan with nothing to pay for the modem its self if you take out a 24 month contract.
Once i had completed the order online via the secure checkout i was instantly sent an email indicating my order was being processed and the appropriate credit checks were being conducted.
A few hours later into the day i then received a second email advising me that i had passed the screening stage and my order was now being picked from the warehouse for same day dispatch.
As expected the next morning my order had arrived via Royal Mail Special Delivery. I opened the rather small package to be greeted by the modem it’s self, the two USB cables and the manual. As usual i put the manual to one side, connected up the USB cable to the modem and then plugged this into my laptop.
Upon plugging the modem into my laptop Windows Vista automatically recognised the device and displayed an auto-run window to install the modem dashboard and drivers from the on-board flash memory of the modem it’s self. I proceeded with the install which took a little less than one minute to complete.
Now the modem was installed it was time to connect to the Internet for the first time and experience 3G / HSDPA browsing on my laptop.
The T-Mobile dashboard software indicated i had a HSDPA signal with a strength of two bars. I now proceeded to click connect to authenticate the device with the T-Mobile servers.
After a short moment the device was now online and i was able to browse the Internet via the Web ‘N’ Walk service.
My first use of the service was to conduct a simple speed test. The site i used for the speed test was Speedtest.net which reported i had just a little over 400kbps downstream bandwidth and approximately 300kbps upstream bandwidth.
I have to say i was rather shocked at the speeds report by Speedtest.net as T-Mobile advertise the service as having a maximum throughput of 7.2 mbps.
After a little thinking and a spot of lunch i decided to try and test the service in another way by using a multi-threaded download manager, my choice of download manager was FlashGet. The item i decided to download was the DVD ISO of CentOS 5.
FlashGet reported my average speed to be 225 KB/s which calculates to be approx 1.8 mbps. I was quite surprised at the new reported speed as just over a year ago even my home broadband supplied by Pipex was not as quick as the Web ‘N’ Walk service.
Overall i think the Web ‘N’ Walk service supplied by T-Mobile is useful as it enables road warriors to access the Internet anywhere they have got mobile phone coverage. However i think the fair usage policy that T-Mobile enforce could be a little fairer towards the end user, for example the 10 gigabyte limit on the Max plan would be quite easy to consume within a week.
I also think that the pricing could be a lot cheaper as well, compared to the Max plan sold by Three which has a fair usage limit of 7GB a month, T-Mobile works out to be £10 a month more expensive for an extra three gigabytes of transfer.
I totally agree with you. I use the web ‘n’ walk plus, with the 3-gig transfer cap - and today recieved the warning letter telling me I had exceeded my limit by 1.55 gig! Best part is - I live in an area where the signal fluctuates from 3G to HSDPA frequently, and the lesser speed means it takes forever to open a webpage, let alone download a copy of Father Ted (+/- 200Mb).
Sometimes there is no connection at all!
Even on HSDPA sometimes you can experience some serious connectivity issues i have tried using a vpn over this to try and make things more stable but this ends up killing the vpn server for some reason or another.
i signed up two weeks ago and have already gone 3 gb over my 3 gb usage i wanted to cancel but im stuck with a contract i did not get told about the fair usage policy when i joined via car phone warehouse i only got told they were unlimited download limit
Have they charged you much for going over the 3gb? Some companies never do mention the data allowance and yet they sting you for it. Always best to read the small print several times.
Let us know how it goes chap :o)
t mobile told me there the only company that don’t charge for going over but they can slow your connection down, i haven’t been with them for a month yet but if someone know how they react to excessive use it would be useful
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
I too have just received a letter from T-Mobile telling me that I have exceeded my “Unlimited” web usage limit!
Dictionary
unlimited |ʌnˌlɪmɪtɪd|
adjective
not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent : the range of possible adaptations was unlimited.
• Brit. (of a company) not limited.
• Mathematics (of a problem) having an infinite number of solutions.
DERIVATIVES
unlimitedly adverb
unlimitedness noun
Thesaurus
unlimited
adjective
1 unlimited supplies of water inexhaustible, limitless, illimitable, boundless, immeasurable, incalculable, untold, infinite, endless, bottomless, never-ending. antonym finite.
2 unlimited travel unrestricted, unconstrained, unrestrained, unchecked, unbridled, uncurbed. antonym restricted.
3 unlimited power total, unqualified, unconditional, unrestricted, absolute, supreme. antonym conditional, restricted.
Phoned them up and pointed out the obvious oxymoron and forced one of their operators to admit that their advertising was misleading.
They are now telling me that if I continue to abuse their “Fair Usage Policy” i.e. 3GB (a limit in my opinion) I face having my connection speed reduced to that of a dial-up connection! Of which I still have to pay the said twenty nine or so pounds a month (the whole experience was a bit like being told off by your RE teacher)
Apparently, if this happens (and they give you two warnings!) If you behave on the dial-up speed, they will restore you to full flow.
So why the f*** do I still have to pay the extortionate amount of twenty nine pounds something for a connection the equivalent of an old dial-up until I’ve supposedly been punished?
Steve you are correct in that tmobile are behaving like school teachers. I think their advertising of “unlimited” is a joke as this would indicate you could view an unlimited ammount of webpages which im sure eventually could ammount to 3gb and use your monthly allowance in one go.
I think ofcom should do something about ISP’s that advertise a so called “unlimited” service.
I agree, apparently their all at it. I’ve spoken to a few people about it and it seems that originally they thought 3GB would be enough to justify the use of a so-called “Unlimited” web browsing experience and when they realized that the overall majority of users where substantially going over 3GB’s they introduced the “Fair Usage Policy”.
It seems to me that when the going gets tough they just make up new terminology to screw the consumers over.
It’s a bit like going in to a restaurant that advertises “All You Can Eat” and then having a waiter looking over your shoulder as you dine.
And to Matty on July 17th, 2008,
If I were you I’d avoid Car phone Warehouse like the plague in future, because of their baffling use of terminology they conned me into running two consecutive mobile contracts at the same time. I couldn’t get out o it for three months! but that’s another story.
haha all of this is not sounding good to me!!! =( ive just got myself a t-mobile web n walk with 3gbs from carphone warehouse today….. and it seems this is what i have to look 4ward to!! =( ohh i wish i looked this stuff up b4 i signed the 24month contract!! not good!!
I have not had any problems with t-mobile so far i even roamed in Croatia at one point using data over 3g on my Nokia N73.
I was running an application called fring which lets you make calls to people on msn over the net and i did not seem to get charged for the data
I’m also using this, I’m paying £30 pound for 3gb a month, and my connection is dial up! they wont explain to me how to make it 3g, they just say “You not in a 3g area” however when I signed the contract, they told me I was in a 3G. They also told me Unlimtied downloads but that was a complete lie as well, anyone know where I can complain and hopefully be taken of the contract because to be honest, I’m not happy with the service I’m paying for.
Useful blog by the way, I like it.
Its a shame to hear that your having no luck getting a 3g signal. Tmobile have a bit of a history of getting people on a contract and then once your on there is not alot you can do to cancel it.
First off i would speak to an operator at tmobile and be nice as i work on a helpdesk and know first hand if someone is irate with myself or has been with my colleagues we dont push our selves to go out of our way to help them.
Just explain to them your not happy with the service as you feel it was misadvertised and that you were conned into thinking you would be getting 3g speeds. If all else fails then mention Ofcom. If the mention of Ofcom does not get them doing something for you then write to Ofcom directly and see if they can advise you what to do.
Cheers for the comment :o)
Kind Regards Greg Langford
I cant seem to be able to use the scrabble feature on facebook using my web n walk. does anyone else have this problem?
I will try it for you as soon as i get the modem back off my sisters boy friend. The results shall be posted here
I too was mis-sold theweb n’ walk plan by the carphone warehouse. The thing that bugs me is the unreliability. Although I get a full signal just about everywhere the connection keeps dropping. According to the web n’ walk manager I’m still connected however I cant ping anything or view any webpages. Sometimes I disconnect and re-connect and it still doesnt work. If I remove the Huawei modem and plug it back in again I get a 633 “port already open” error when I try to reconnect. At first I thought it might be just me but a friend reported exactly the same problem. It happens at least once an hour. It means I cant download anything that takes longer than this and doesnt let you restart the download (eg: rapidshare). I download 200mb of data from a 700mb download, the connection dies and thats 200mb of my monthly fair usage wasted!
i have got a web and walk stick from carphone warehouse.. it was fine to begin with.. but it constantly changes from 3G to hsdpa.. when its on 3g.. nothing happens… its freezes.. it also keeps going to local only connection.. or the blue light suddenly flashes green and your off.. it gets a little better after midnignt.. but in the evening its not usable at all.. i play on line poker.. but cant now because of this piss poor connection.. i want to stop my direct debit, and cancel the contract as they are breaching there side of the contract by not providing me with fast broad band!!! GRRRRRRRRR!!
hi, yeah i have excactly the same problem as all of you guys i live in a city centre and theirs a really good signal, but it still suddenely dies on me, sometimes (all night too!) my d/l on films went upto 230 kb/s very good but other times i cant even open google it sucks it really does my advice is never to go for this new technology, well its new for the uk, becouse it aint perfected and turns out to be just another way to con us out of our hard earned cash, and the compressed images really pisses me off, imagine using bebo or somthing and it asks you to enter the numbers/letters shown below in image etc.. you have to hold shift + R to get the real image its a total bag of spanners just like the directors/managers of t-mobile, they should label all web n walk devices with “warning may contain rape juice” and i think people would keep their distance, oh and another thing their doing at the mo becouse of the credit crunch is they are not letting you have an upgrade on your phone till some time after christmas becouse they dont have the money.. but hold on.. wait for it… .. if you take out a new contract you can get a new phone, their so clever rn’t they well i say everyone teams up signs some kind of petition against this so called “unlimited” crap and somthing might be done, hopefully t-mobile will follow sega (i loved sega) anyway so yeah glad i got that off my chest, im mainly pissed at the fact my online game freezes up half way through killing something and when i log back in.. im .. yup.. dead. hours of gameplay ruined.
thankyou for reading what i think about them
andy
*about (see how stressed they make me, i even forget a word in my sentance).. arghhhh!!!
Hi Andy,
It would seem you are having the same problems as everyone else which is unfortunate. I happen to work for a IT support company called Sanderson RBS (Used to be Retail business Solutions”) and we provide the IT support for companies such as La Senza, anyway getting to the point La Senza have just had alot of temporary christmas stores installed with 3G routers using o2 as the provider but the service is that poor that trying to process a credit card through times out nearly every time, i think all the operators in the uk most likely need to sit down together and sort some kind of agreement out about coverage and the technology being used. I will certainly be fowarding everyones thoughts on to tmobile when i try to escape my 18 month contract :o)
Kind Regards Greg Langford