I am writing to suggest that all prospective 3 Mobile Broadband customers give 3 Mobile Broadband a miss.

My partner recently signed up for an 18 month contract with 3 for up to 5GB per month. So far our personal experience has been simply terrible and we would absolutely recommend that anyone else thinking of using 3 go elsewhere.

To illustrate this, here is a summary of our experience so far (if you can't be bothered with this bit skip to the bottom for a summary):

We received the modem and plugged it in, and it seemed to install OK - but it wouldn't connect. 3 Technical Support turned out to be in India, strongly accented (and barely intelligable) and with absolutely no personal experience of the product. The script they called up on their screen was not technically accurate, and by the time I had followed its convoluted instructions over the phone, I knew more about the product than 3 Technical Support did. However, they made no progress diagnsing the cause, said my modem was faulty and connected me to the customer service team who could arrange a replacement - but unfortunately all I got was a recorded messages explaining they were closed and giving their opening hours which we were still within.

So I called back a second time, and went through exactly the same diagnostics again with another un-knowledgeable "technical support" person and another supervisor. This time they refused to allow me a replacement modem and insisted I sent the modem for repair, and when I said I wanted a replacement rather than a repair, she insisted against my explicit wishes to connect me with the cancellations department. Since I didn't want to cancel at the time, I rang off.

Next stop was their web site - and it started to become clear that the Huwai modem software was incompatible with a wide range of CD writing, Dell and web-cam software. I decided that some of this software I had installed wasn't really needed and uninstalled some of it in the hope of getting the modem to work. After several uninstalls modem still not working.

Next morning I tried to phone 3 in the UK to speak to a senior manager. The switchboard was polite but very well trained to deflect even persistent customers from being able to speak with a senior manager. They were apparently unable to connect you to someone by role, but having found some names on the Internet, I was still unable to contact any employee in the UK except the switchboard operator who could do nothing to help me.

In the end I took a look in Device Manager and found the modem would not install properly and I called 3 Technical Support again. This time I managed to speak to a supervisor who first advised me that their records indicated that I wanted to cancel and I had to explain that this was not true. Anyway, he was willing to call me back and when he did had some technical knowledge, and agreed that the modem was broken and would arrange a replacement. I heard nothing about arrangements for this, and phoned again the next day, this time speaking with a different supervisor who again refused a replacement and said I needed to send it off for repair so the drivers could be updated. When I said (admitedly rather forcefully but still politely) that I wanted a replacement for a DOA modem that had never worked rather than a repair he hung up on me.

Finally overnight I decided that if I didn't accept a repair, nothing was going to happen, so I phoned again and agreed a collection on Monday and return on Wednesday. When the modem didn;t arrive back on Wednesday, I phoned yet again and was told it would now be Thursday - when it did arrive allong with a letter from the Director of Operations that the modem was not in fact faulty.

So I tried it again, and it worked - with newer drivers on it. Or mostly worked - and only fully worked when I downloaded and installed a further update. That is, until I plugged in my webcam and then it stopped working and stayed not working until I uninstalled, rebooted, installed, updated and rebooted again.

So now it was working, but somewhat slowly. A broadband speed test showed speeds of between 120Kbps and 220Kbps about 1/20 the 3Mbps 3 was suggesting I might get - more dial-up speed than mobile broadband.

Summary

The Huwai modem drivers and software is very poorly written:
Brand new modem needed to be sent back for repair before it would work
Repair team said modem was working, but they still fixed it by installing new drivers
Even the new software needed an update
Eventually I got it working, but it is still incompatible with CD/DVD writers, Dell software and webcams
When it does connect, 3's broadband speed is not much better than dial-up
Technical and customer support is all from india, poorly trained, difficult to understand, and unwilling to actually listen to your complaint
Technical support people often have not used the equipment and have almost no technical knowledge
Customer service is uncaring, arrogant, rude and records untruths in your customer log
And if you want to escalate to someone in the UK you can't.

Do yourself a favour, and don't buy Mobile Broadband from 3.