Unlimited suggests that there are no limits - so in the case of T-mobile unlimited mobile broadband I should be able to use it without limit, right? Well in practice that just isn't the case. In practice my T-mobile web 'n' walk unlimited mobile broadband works perfectly, it seems, so long as I don't use it. It will work fine all day if I occasionally download e-mails but if I do anything that requires sustained bandwidth it invariably drops the connection. Try reconnecting and it will sit there quite happily until I pull any data through it and it will drop the connection again, the more you try and reconnect the quicker it is to drop the connection. It's just possible there is a physical problem causing this - something in the laptop or the modem might be overheating (these 3G modems do draw a lot of power) but it seems most likely that there is a soft limit in terms of amount of data over time that causes the network to drop the connection.

Now I can see that T-mobile would want to protect it's mobile broadband network against abuse, and if someone sat there all day pulling down videos from the mobile network I'd expect them to ask questions, but I am getting disconnected after no more than 15 minutes of sustained use which doesn't really fit with any definition of unlimited mobile broadband.

This is a problem for me. The way I, and probably a lot of other people, use mobile broadband, and the reason I have it, is as a backup to a wired connection. I don't use it everyday, I use it on days when I am away from the office, without a fixed broadband connection, and on those occasions I might use it quite intensively. Then I'm back in the office and I can go for days without using it. It's no good to me if I am away from the office and I need to use mobile broadband intensively and it decides I've had enough because under those circumstances I am using it because I really need to.

I shall be on to T-mobile to see what their side of the story is and what small print I may have missed in their description of "unlimited mobile broadband", if I learn anything I'll add it here. I'd be interested in your comments, if you have similar experiences or can shed any light on this (just click the comments link below).

Update 15/01/09 Response from T-mobile

Having spoken to customer services at T-mobile I have been assured that the fair usage policy would not result in the modem dropping the connection. At worst the speed would be limited to "throttle back" and you'd get a letter to say you're pushing the limit. In my case I am no where near any monthly fair usage limit. Since 5th November last year when I reset the stats I have uploaded 2.23 Mb and downloaded 84.28 Mb, a long way off the stated 3Gb per month fair use. The explanation given for the problem is network congestion, you are sharing bandwidth with other users and if there is too high demand at any one moment in time you won't all get served. I can't say I'm totally convinced. If you have a similar problem the advice is to contact customer services on 0845 412 5000 at the time and give them your location post code, they can then see if the network at your location is congested. Apparently they can only see network traffic in real time so you need to call when you are experiencing the problem (NOTE: it takes just over two minutes to navigate through the 4 levels of IVR before you get to a phone actually ringing so don't bother if you are in a hurry).

Update 16/01/09

Ran some tests today and had the modem connected for two hours just running a ping and it stayed up with no problem. Tried to use it to download a VPN client and it dropped out half way through the download. Phoned customer services straight away ( + 2 minutes for IVR ). They couldn't see anything unusual with the network capacity in my area. I was put through to technical support and after explaining the problem again was talked though some basic checks. Apparently with 3G when you have a connection if there is no data traffic the link is dropped and the modem will reconnect again when it needs to pass some data. It is possible at busy times that it can't reconnect because there is not enough capacity. Also I am right on the edge of 3G coverage, signal strength may be a problem, the little signal strength meter generally shows 95%, but on occasions drops to zero which is strange. It was suggested I setup a dial up networking connection (still via the mobile network) which would be more stable and would drop back to GPRS if 3G failed.

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