The smartphone’s rise seems unstoppable

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This is a guest post written for TechnologyBlogged by consumer news and reviews site Choose. The site covers the UK’s broadband deals and includes guides on no contract broadband.

The smartphone’s rise seems unstoppable, and recent research by the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing found that 28% of all UK browsing is carried out on hand-held devices now. The proportion of 3G browsing must be much higher and for now, that need to get online on the go with a laptop or netbook are largely faced with the following conundrum: dongle or external modem? Well in this guide we aim help you make a decision on which one would be best for you.

What are they?

A ‘dongle’ or mobile broadband modem is a small USB stick with 3G connectivity. An external modem on the other hand, also known as a Mifi modem or a wireless pointer, also connects to a 3G signal but then it converts that signal to wi-fi which can be picked up by most devices in exactly the same way as a home broadband wireless router.

So a dongle can connect one device at a time, and then only when it has a USB port, while an external modem can connect several, usually up to five at once.

So it’s a no-brainer. External modems have it in this versus , right?

Speeds

Wrong. An external modem is converting a notoriously inefficient signal, 3G, into an even more inefficient one. What this means is that a serious degradation in speeds occur when using an external modem. Considering that the average 3G signal some providers give us are speeds of 1-2Mb that means slow broadband for all but the strongest signal areas.

USB modems aren’t perfect themselves, of course.

They’re prone to being knocked out of the USB port which immediately terminates the connection and , arguably, it’s easier to move around an external modem to find a stronger 3G signal than it is to move the whole computer to do the same thing.

Prices

Another important consideration is price., because mobile broadband is notoriously expensive per MB and that means that a lot of the complex things you might want to do on your PC on the go could end up being very expensive.

As always, use out of allowance is particularly pricey so it’s well worth estimating usage correctly at the outset.

Larger allowances – by which we mean 10GB or 15GB at most – are usually only available within longer term contracts.

As with mobile phones, contract and non-contract is one of the biggest differences in price. You can easily pay £15 for 15GB a month or exactly the same amount for just 2GB or (out of allowance) a few hundred MB of usage elsewhere.

There’s also a big difference in hardware costs between a dongle and an external modem.

A USB modem normally costs about £20 upfront but expect to pay about £60 for an external device. This applies even when taking a contract as the high initial price is built into the monthly cost.

In short

In short, while an external modem is worthwhile if you have several wi-fi enabled devices – a pc and an iPod touch, for example – otherwise a good old USB dongle wins out both on speeds and cost.

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