For a variety of reasons I can't get land-line broadband at my home address in Milton Keynes. A few weeks ago I saw an advert for Mobile Broadband from mobile phone company "3", so decided to give it a go. I paid ~Ł50 for a USB dongle, and Ł15 for my first month's downloads, 3GB limit. The dongle self-installs and I've had it working on my desk-top and my laptop equally well. My dongle has a mobile phone number so I can send it text messages, and my computer then rings just like a GPO phone did about 40 years ago. All went well until last Sunday, June 1st when it was as though I'd been rejected by the network. I had to revert to land-line 56k dial-up.

The "3" shop told me that they'd had a network outage last Sunday - this morning, I noted that the roller shutters on the "3" shop in Milton Keynes were very closed. I'm now beginning to wonder whether there's more going on behind the scenes than I've been told...

Perhaps I'll be able to use the dongle/SIM/USIM on other networks if "3" disappears completely. Strange that at lunchtime today the BBC were running a news item about Mobile Broadband and their report was based on land-line problems in Milton Keynes.