First let’s look at 3 Mobile and see what they have to offer the average student, who presumably already has a laptop computer:

• The Dongle is free with this wireless internet deal
• Monthly price of £7.50 after this though.  When they put a price like this on a dongle deal aimed at students, personally i think they are insulting the average student’s intelligence.  A free dongle doesn’t cut it when you can buy one from Vodafone for £19.99 and only pay £3.00 a month after your initial dongle purchase.  This initial payout is soon recuperated by the monthly costs.
• 1 GB of usage allowance.  This isn’t too bad, and it beats the hell out of Orange’s 500Mb offer at the moment.  However, they still don’t beat Vodafone’s 3GB allowance.
• 7.2Mb speed
• 24 month contract.  This is an unlikley thing for buyers of student dongles.

Now it’s the turn of O2

• Free dongle with O2.  Just the same as 3 Mobile here.
• Monthly cost of £10.00 with this dongle deal.  This isn’t too bad compared with 3 Mobile because O2 offer the first 3 months free.  However, £10 a month after that will soon make up the difference between the two providers won’t it?
• Usage of 1GB a month.  Same as 3 Mobile here.
• 7.2Mb speed
• 18 month contract.

Well there you have it.  Both these dongles compare pretty much the same, but they will not beat Vodafone at the moment for the student market.  I think that the contract length will put many people off.  Just the word contract is enough to put me off!

Considering that they are the same price there are quite a number of differences between these two dongle deals.  They are both offering their £10 dongle deal on an 18 month contract, which sadly comes nowhere near the top guys who are offering much better packages on a 12 month contract for only a fiver more, but if you want a regular cheap connection then Orange or O2 would be the ones you’d look at.

However, for a budget connection at the same price as Orange’s dongle deal, O2 slips far from the mark unfortunately.  They let themselves down considerably on their speed.  Their dongle deal speed is only up to 3.6mb.  Now some of you out there might be saying “well that’s not bad if you only want to surf the internet on the way to work or something”  and you would be right; but why pay £10 for 3.6mb when you can get 7.4mb for the same price from Orange?

It isn’t as if O2 even make up for it with a greater download allowance (that let Orange down), because this is just the same as Orange!  Get it together O2 and look at your competition, that’s what i say!

This £25 deal is subject to a two year contract, but this is no different than nearly every other mobile broadband provider these days anyway.  O2 compete well with the other big mobile providers like 3 Mobile and Vodafone when it comes to their free laptop dongle deals, and their 24 month contract comes at a cool £25 per month.

For this price you get speeds of up to 3.6 Mb, which isn’t as good as the top of the range free laptop dongle deal from 3 Mobile, but it all depends on where you are in the world as to whether or not you can get the maximum speeds anyway.  3.6Mb should be enough for most people, and certainly enough for what you need to do when you’re out and about on your laptop.  The next feature O2 offer is 3 GB download limit, which again doesn’t beat 3 Mobile but it’s more than enough, and if you consider that 3 Mobile are charging an extra £10 a month for the top of the range dongle deal then you’ll be pleased to take on the O2 deal.

The free laptop from O2 is an Asus 1005H, and this is a pretty good laptop by anyone’s standards.  This laptop is capable of doing all the things you do at home on your desktop so you don’t need anything else really.

And to top it off O2 are also offering you 300 free texts when you sign up on the dotted line!