Broadband Genie tests mobile broadband

Broadband Genie, the broadband comparison service, has been checking out if mobile broadband lives up to the claims of leading ISPs.

In its first ever ‘Road Trip Awards’, Broadband Genie tested dongles from O2, Orange, 3, T-mobile, Virgin Media and Vodafone, to see how they performed.

The dongles were tested on a 350-mile rail journey from Cambridge to Bournemouth, including a stop at London King’s Cross.

Virgin Media came out as the ‘Dongle on the Move 2009’ winner, closely followed by Vodafone, with both of these ISPs providing reasonable average upload and download speeds throughout the journey.

However rural locations presented a problem, with the testers experiencing periods of downtime.

As well testing for speed, the testers carried out various tasks such as downloading BBC podcasts, streaming audio and video via YouTube and Spotify, and uploading photos to Facebook.

Winners in the other categories were:

Road Trip Downloader 2009 winner: Virgin Media runner up: Vodafone
Road Trip Uploader 2009 winner: Vodafone runner up: O2
Road Trip’s Most Stable 2009 winner: O2 runner up: Orange
Road Trip Coverage 2009 winner: Vodafone runner up: Virgin Media
Dongle Software 2009 joint winners: T-Mobile and Virgin Media