A Review of Virgin Mobile's Broadband2go

When the cable company in my area balked at providing service to the remodeled apartment I recently moved in to, I was caught off guard. After all, the apartment is within city limits--and only a couple of blocks away from downtown at that. Plus, I've been a customer of the company for years. I called my landlord and he even had trouble with the company. Their excuse was the expense of the wiring, but my landlord has put forth the expense of supplying the wiring himself. All the cable company has to do is apply connectors and jacks to the wall outlets. That's all. Well, after almost two weeks of dealing with this company, I decided to try something else. There's only one DSL provider in my area and I'm not even going to consider that company as an option. I have dealt with them before many times and I have yet to have a pleasing experience with them. It looked like my options were out, but I happened to stumble upon an interesting third option.

I recently found out that there is in fact 3G data access in my area. While I was in Scottsdale, AZ, I was able to get a taste of what it's like to have 3G. To put it simply, I loved it. It isn't the fastest option available, but it is very portable (i.e. I'm not tied to any one location by cable). After researching the providers in my area, I decided to give Virgin Mobile a try.

The main reason I chose Virgin Mobile is the lack of a contract for the service. On top of that, Virgin Mobile offered unlimited bandwidth for $40 per month. To me, that seemed like a fair deal. I stopped by a Radio Shack in Oklahoma City on my way home after my trip from Scottsdale and purchased the necessary items to get Virgin Mobile's Broadband2go service for my home. I walked out of the store with $40 in credits and an Ovation MC760 USB modem. (If you need to connect more than one computer, I'd suggest you buy the MiFi 2200 Mobile Hotspot. I plan on purchasing this device in the near future.)

The setup and activation of the Ovation MC760 was quick and painless on my iMac running Snow Leopard. Once the device was activated, all I had to do was apply my credits and enjoy the service. At this point, I ran into a bit of a snag. No matter what website I tried to visit, I was always redirected to my account login screen. I couldn't go anywhere on the Internet. It seems that applying credits isn't the only step involved. Once the credits were applied, I had to go to my account (the account page pops up every time the device is connected) and use those credits to purchase the $40 unlimited plan for Broadband2go. The instructions weren't completely clear on that, but once I purchased the plan, all was well and I was browsing away on the Internet.

Connection speeds with Broadband2go are not that bad. In fact, they are sufficient enough for my web usage. Now, don't be fooled by what the connection software claims the connection speed is. It claims that it is connected at 3.1Mbps, which isn't necessarily the case. 3G is capable of those speeds in ideal conditions, but when does broadband wireless ever operate under ideal conditions? Using Speedtest.net to test speeds more accurately, I consistently get about 1.3Mbps download and 520kbps upload. That download speed is about half of what I got with my cable service and the upload speed is the same as I got with cable service. The numbers look alright, but how do they actually perform with the web services and websites I use on a daily basis?

My main Internet usage is in Gmail and the various Google services (e.g. Google Docs, Google Reader, Picasa, etc.). I also use Facebook quite often. Broadband2go is more than enough to use these sites without any issues. I also watch a lot of Hulu videos with my wife. Surprisingly, Broadband2go was able to handle Hulu without too much trouble. The trick is to pause the video as soon as it starts and let the video buffer for a bit (Hulu provides a buffer progress bar at the top of the video when the mouse is hovered over the video area). Once buffered, my wife and I were able to watch a 90-minute video without any hindrance. YouTube, on the other hand, wasn't as smooth as Hulu. When watching a movie or TV show on YouTube, I had to let the video buffer quite a bit more in order to watch the video seamlessly. Watching video with Broadband2go isn't perfect, but with a little patience while videos buffer, it is quite capable of performing the task. In addition to video, I tested Broadband2go's large file download capabilities. I downloaded a 700MB file at a consistent rate of 140kBps (kilobytes per second), which works out to about one hour and twenty-five minutes to complete. That's not great, but not too bad. For my needs, it's sufficient.

After discovering that Virgin Mobile's Broadband2go service was capable of handling my personal Internet usage, coupled with a monthly fee of $40 without a contract, I called the cable provider and canceled my cable service. So far, I am quite pleased with the consistency of Virgin Mobile's service. I would recommend Broadband2go to anyone looking for a mobile broadband Internet service or as an alternative to the services provided in his or her area.