"...we now offer Mobile Broadband on Pay As You Go! So if you don't want a contract, you don't have to have one - the choice is yours. And better still, we don't charge you any more for the service as a Pay As You Go customer – it's still just £10 for 1GB of data, and you have 30 days in which to use it."

• Broadband Lite: 1 GB/month, 10 pounds
• Broadband Plus 3 GB/month, 15 pounds
• Broadband Max: 7 GB/month, 25 pounds

• Network Coverage

• Here's a link to the 'Get Started Guide' for Interent Access with Pay As You Go SIMs. Among other things the PDF file behind the link explains how to activate one of the broadband offers above via 3's online portal.

• Here's a report of how to activate one of the offers in practice and ignore warnings from shop assistants that it won't work with non-'3' phones.

• APN: three.co.uk (in case the phone doesn't configure itself automatically. Tested the APN with the 10GB offer in April 2008)

• Store locator

• It looks like they are not blocking applications. My IPSec VPN works as well as Yahoo messenger and voice calls via the Skype PC client.

• 'Three' seems to have some bandwidth throtteling in place. Downlink speeds reach around 1 MBit/s (tested with a 3.6 MBit/s HSDPA modem in several locations and over several days) and the uplink is limited to 50-60 kbit/s. The uplink limit probably prevents use ofmost VoIP software except for Skype, which uses around 30 kbit/s in uplink if it detects that more is not available. (April 2008)

• Reliability: In the past couple of months I have noticed that 3's service is not very reliable. The connection is often slow, especially in the evening, and sometimes does not work at all. End of July 2008, I arrived in London and only got sporradic service until I stopped trying and used a Vodafone Websession with a different SIM card. They might be cheap but that is worth nothing if it doesn't work.
• Reliability Update: at the end of August 2008 I have used 3 "Broadband Lite" in London and I noticed no problems at all with the service. The average speed was around 400-500 kbps d/u and everytime I needed internet access it worked flawlessy.
• Reliability Update: at the end of Oct 2008 I reactivated my 3 pay-as-you-go USB dongle and it was very very slow (down to 20 kbps in the evening). When I used it before (in Feb 2008) internet access was very quick. I too can say: "Vodafon is much better right now".
  

• Internet Daily £0.50
• Internet Weekly £2.50
• Internet Monthly £5.00

• The offers are intended for mobile phone use only, but PC tethering is possible. Services tested are web, secure smtp and secure pop3, Skype and Yahoo Instant messaging, ftp.

• When you top up, a 150 MB allowance for mobile Internet is automatically added free of charge which is valid for 90 days. In other words, you only need to activate one of the options above if you go over this free allowance.

• Features can be activated and allowance can be checked from a mobile browser via this link: http://mobile3.three.co.uk/837_sc

• It's also possible to activate a plug-on by calling 444.