With booth contracted mobile broadband and mobile broadband pay as you go, the kind of broadband deals you get are largely dependent upon where you live. If you live in the larger cities, you will enjoy more diverse, reliable and better services from your mobile broadband provider. Unfortunately, smaller towns and rural areas are less likely to receive 3G coverage. The best you can get while there is 2G, which is not so great, but will at least keep you connected and help you read and reply your mails.

Before signing up with an internet service provider, check out their mobile broadband coverage (which they should have on their website) to ascertain that your region is covered. Use postcode availability checkers found in most broadband-related websites. Most companies are selective in their areas of coverage.

Similarly, if you are moving to a new region, it will help to check out the strengths of the different mobile broadband services in the area. Overall, there will be the average speed and signal strength you can expect to get from your mobile broadband. The ISP (Internet Service Providers) will promise high speeds, some as high as 7Mbps. However, do not expect much; most speeds will not go beyond 3Mbps.

There are factors that will affect the kind of deal you enjoy from your ISP. One of these is the distance of your house from the masts. Houses that are nearest to the mast and with little structures between then enjoy incredibly high speeds. However, this only happens some hours as speed variants are affected by several other factors.

If you live in an area with plenty of high rise buildings and are smack in the middle, you will enjoy poor reception. Also if your house has thick walls, the network will be likely to be a bit on the low side. If your house is surrounded by trees, coverage will also be low. Mobile broadband is still weaker than fixed line internet but it has obvious advantages, such as keeping you connected wherever you are, including when on the move.

If you do not use the internet much, mobile broadband pay as you go, rather than a monthly contract, would be more appropriate for you. In these kinds of deals, you pay up front then use your dongle until you reach your broadband limit. You can top up for your mobile broadband pay as you go by either buying credit for use per day or use per GB.

With pay per day mobile broadband, you can go to the internet all day but there is a limit to how much bandwidth you can use. The only limitation in pay per GB is space, meaning you can only download certain amount of GB over a certain period of time. Upon expiry of this time, any unused bundle is lost. Go for this only when you are sure you’ll have the time to utilize your entire allocated GB.

To enjoy the strongest signal, connect your modem during off peak hours. This is time during which many people are not busy on the internet and so the speeds increase considerably. The best times for this are late at night and very early in the morning, when most people are asleep. This is also the best time to carry out heavier tasks such as downloading games, videos and other large files.

This article was written on behalf of Broadband Choices. For more information see Mobile broadband Mobile broadband pay as you go