Today I had a meeting with Gavin Price from CSCM.co.uk, they are a great computer/tech company based in Birmingham, and Gavin happens to be one of my team members for the Birmingham 4Networking group. He also recently supplied me with a Three Mobile Broadband dongle to replace my old Vodafone one….Now, you would think that, given the name ‘Vodafone’ they’d have the best coverage, being a long standing massive company? Well, I didn’t have much luck with my old Vodafone dongle, very patchy signal most places I went. The one place I wanted it to work was the place I always go in Cornwall…..however, I only got patchy GPRS signal at best, meaning for web use it was useless! (Granted, thorough research should have been done and wasn’t!)

So a few weeks ago Gavin supplied me with a shiny new dongle, at an exceptionally good price, and I have to say the signal strength everywhere I’ve been has been exceptional. Have always had broadband speed, at a good signal, even in Cornwall! No drop in connectivity at all, even though down there we’re fairly remote. So all in all, fantastic result!

And it got me thinking……

Do you think that using mobile dongles will end up being the future of internet connectivity? Or do you think ‘cloud’ computing will really take off as people are predicting? The benefit with cloud computing and nationwide wifi hotspot access means connectivity is theoretically flawless, fire up your laptop wherever you are, cafe, restaurant, airport, train, and continue to work away.

The benefit with the dongles is that you’re not really suffering any contention with other people sharing that line, like you do on wifi networks, where one person downloading a movie will scupper everyone else trying to simply check emails! Especially if you do a lot of sensitive working whilst on the road, using a dongle is also more secure, as no one can hack into your network connection; it’s a designated line from your computer to the cellular network.

So, over to you – do you own one? What network are you on? Do you have a need to regularly work out of the office on the road? Or do you own one purely for using it when the need arises?…