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Don’t you dongle?

Mobile broadband for your laptop? linton chiswick reviews the options

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According to recent figures, the latest must-have mobile phone gadget has little to do with telephony, but a lot to do with the internet.

Known (somewhat charmlessly) as a '3G dongle', it's a small device that plugs into a laptop computer and facilitates internet connectivity anywhere there is a mobile phone signal.

Across the UK, as many as 18,000 of these devices are being sold each week, suggesting a broadband-on-the-go itch that badly needed scratching. Mobile phone operators are falling over

 

each other to offer cheaper connectivity at higher speeds - which is potentially very good for you, me and our laptops.

Currently, the cheapest service comes courtesy of 3. An 18-month contract on the 'Broadband Lite' tariff costs £10 a month, the dongle's free, and you get a gigabyte of surfing a

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month... good as an expedient between home and office connections. The fastest - Vodafone's USB Modem Stick - offers speeds of up to 7.2Mbps (faster than many home broadband connections) and costs £15 a month for 18 months, plus £79 for the

 

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