Just happened to come across this item - a Netgear Modem that connects to the 3G Mobile Broadband network - for the staggering price of almost £300 and it isn't even a Router!

On p-a-y-g, the USB "dongle" Modem is under £60. With a contract, it's probably free.

I don't think I'll be bothering with that then.

I've just seen this, but better late than never.

The Netgear MBM621 is a magnificent modem, and beats USB dongles and their truly awful software into a cocked hat. I've been using one for over 18 months on the 3 network as the only internet connection in my office, and a usb dongle for 6 months prior to that. In Dec 07 typical performance was 112k download and 35k upload. Now typical is 2.5M download and 150k upload, so the network has improved dramatically in two years. But the dongles remain grim.

The only problem is getting at the 3 network service SMS messages when using the Netgear. The messages arrive onto the SIM card OK, but I get no warning and have no means of reading them, other than putting the SIM into the dongle and reading from there. Could anybody throw some AT commands into an applet that would do it, and can Hyper Terminal be made to work through the ethernet port anyway?

Nik