We’re regularly asked by people travelling to the UK for business or holiday which is the best network operator to use for mobile broadband…….not an easy question to answer!
The first problem is defining what is meant by ‘best’. Most holiday makers coming to the UK just want a low cost Pay As You Go data plan that can be used to retrieve a few emails and do a bit of web browsing. Business users often have more complex needs and want to setup VPNs back to their office, use VOIP services and generally require relatively large amounts of mobile data.
The data we’ve compiled below is taken from our own customer’s feedback, surveys carried out by large organisations (YouGov, BBC, Which etc) and smaller independent research data relating to 3G data services. We have not included any information relating to voice or older 2G data technologies e.g. EDGE, GPRS. We’ve also only included the 5 main UK networks providers.
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The AirCard 313U is fully backwards compatible with all previous 3G and 2G mobile broadband technologies including: Dual Carrier HSPA+, HSPA, UMTS, EDGE and GRPS. It’s also a 3G tri-band device making it ideal for international travel.
The 753s supports Dual Carrier HSPA+ network which gives it a theoretical maximum download speed of 42Mbps and upload speed of 5.76Mbps.