Road Trip 3G Mobile Broadband Awards Winners
Road Trip 3G Mobile Broadband Awards Winners
1st June , 2009
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UK : The results are now available for the first Mobile Broadband Genie Road Trip Awards. The exercise directly pitted dongles provided by six mobile broadband suppliers (O2, Orange, 3, T-mobile, Virgin Media and Vodafone) against each other on a 350-mile rail journey over two days.
According to providers, mobile broadband is the answer for people who want to access the internet 'on the move'. Broadband Genie decide to put these claims to the test to see if consumers can expect to get what they're paying for. The results were decidedly mixed, with Virgin Media (Winner) and Vodafone (Runner Up) performing best overall.
Broadband Genie editor Chris Marling said: "Mobile broadband has come a long way in a short time, but consumers need to be aware of its limitations. We feel the service is often oversold, which can leave customers disillusioned and likely to turn their back on mobile broadband.
"We would like to congratulate Virgin Media, as well as runners up Vodafone, who both performed admirably. They completed the majority of challenges and maintaining reasonable average upload and download speeds throughout. However, both still suffered disconnects and long periods of downtime in rural locations."
Commenting on the victory, Virgin Media director of mobile Jonathan Kini said: "We are delighted to win this award for our mobile broadband, which highlights the reliability of our dongle, and the ease of use that our customers can enjoy. Virgin Media offer a complete range of broadband solutions, so that we can accommodate the needs of users throughout the country, and our mobile broadband is perfect for customers who want value for money and wish to avoid being tied to a specific location."
Armed with laptops, plus dongles supplied by all six providers, Broadband Genie staff took a train trip from Cambridge to Bournemouth, including a stop at London King's Cross, putting the dongles through their paces all the way.
This was an on-the-spot exercise using the kind of frustrating conditions consumers find them themselves in every day. The fascinating results echo the general reaction Mobile Broadband Genie gets from its visitors when it comes to mobile broadband: we expect much more than it is currently able to supply.
Genie staff performed a variety of tests throughout the trip. As well as running Mobile Broadband Genie speed tests, we performed common tasks such as downloading BBC podcasts, streaming audio and video via YouTube and Spotify, and uploading photos to Facebook.