A colleague of mine wanted to get some kind of mobile broadband solution for his netbook – an Acer Aspire One. Brilliant little machine. I fancy a Samsung NC10 myself, or maybe an Asus 1008HA Seashell.

Anyway, he’s running the standard Acer OS – Linpus. He already had the ‘Mobile Partner’ application installed, which is required if you want to connect using a Huawei modem. We plugged the dongle in, and it was recognised by the software within a few seconds, albeit as a Huawei E220 (technically identical to the E160). It picked up a perfectly reasonable O2 3G signal considering we were indoors. Next came the creation of a ‘profile’ for the connection. We set up a new one, called it ‘O2′, and attempted to enter the settings. This is where we got a bit stuck. O2 dont provide any help for this OS. There is software available for Windows and Mac OS X, but that configures your connection settings for you. We needed the settings for a manual setup. A quick Google or two later, and we had found a variety of suggested settings. We tried all of them, but to no avail. In the end, I remembered that when I set a manual connection up on my Mac laptop, I didnt need usernames or passwords, just the APN. So I went ahead and set the APN to be ‘m-bb.o2.co.uk’, with a phone number of ‘*99#’. I’d read that the username of ‘o2bb’ with a password of ‘password’ may be necessary, but I didnt enter these. I left the authentication method as CHAP. As with the other settings we tried, we just kept being presented with the ‘Connecting..’ message, but it never seemed to complete the connection. The light on the dongle (green for GSM, blue for 3G) went solid, which suggested to me that it was completing the connection, but maybe not authenticating?

A bit more Googling, and someone suggested that the Mobile Partner software recently had a bug introduced, which meant that the ‘Connecting…’ message would remain on the screen, even once it had made a successful connection! The workaround is to just minimise the Mobile Partner software once  the light changes to solid. Then you can just load up your web browser, etc, and it should all just work! It certainly did for us.

But what’s this got to do with UK Broadband, I hear you – imaginary guy that I’ve borrowed from Wil Wheaton – asking? Shh…I’m getting there…

As I have a lot of personal files on my iMac, I wasnt going to trust it as-is in the hands of my local Apple reseller, so I backed it up with SuperDuper!, formatted it and installed a fresh copy of OS X 10.4 Tiger (via a USB DVD drive). The iMac went off for repair, came back fixed, and then came the time for installing OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Still not seeing what this has to do with UK Broadband… Shhhhh!! I’m getting there!…

After installing Leopard, I went straight for the software update to get the latest patches. The Mac OS X 10.5.6 update alone weighed in at a monstrous 675MB. This was without the Airport, Java and other updates, which took the total way over 1GB. At this point, I havent even installed the iLife suite, or Microsoft Office, which will also require some hefty updates.

I also wanted to upgrade my laptop running Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, to 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. The amount needed to be downloaded for this upgrade came in at a hefty 607MB.

Anyway, the point of all this, is that I have recently had a new phone line fitted, with O2′s home broadband service. I was considering going with Sky for their ‘free’ broadband, but with a monthly download limit of 2GB, I would have punched through that in one evening alone. God forbid I even consider watching something on the BBC iPlayer service! HD? Don’t be silly! Luckily, the O2 package that I have (which is their lowest package), comes with ‘unlimited’ downloads. Fair use policy aside, this is how all broadband providers should be offering their services.

A quick look at the moneysupermarket.com comparison site, shows that there are still lots of broadband suppliers offering monthly download limits. They’re not even decent limits either. Going back to the ‘free’ Sky broadband. You get a 2Mbps line, with a 2GB download limit. This immediately takes you out of the running if you want to watch BBC iPlayer HD. Even if your 2Mbps line could stream the video to you (which it cant), you’d almost hit your monthly limit from watching one hour-long programme.

I suppose the purpose of this post rant, is just to highlight my frustration at how progress of digital services in the UK, is being desperately hindered by the greed of our lacklustre communications companies. Get it sorted!