I've been seriously considering changing my broadband connection from a fixed-line to a mobile solution (i.e. dongle). I thought it prudent to arrange some demonstrations with a few of the mobile broadband providers, and to borrow some data cards from my friends to see what it's like living with the service. What I found came as quite a surprise!
Instantly, you can tell that something is awry. It seems the majority of mobile ISPs are using content filtering and image compression. I am a bit of a tech so I'll put that into layman's terms. Basically, all your images are pixelated or distorted. Also, where the broadband providers are trying to find a workaround for this they have introduced a tooltip to reload your images, that actually just breaks the majority of rich content webpages.
Having tried out most of the sites that I usually visit, and those of my clients, I was shocked to find that images were often compressed to the point of it being impossible to distinguish what is in the picture!
The providers say that they do this to keep your costs down, that by providing a heavily compressed image in place of the original will use less of your bandwidth. This is hugely disappointing, as it gives a genuinely awful web browsing experience, though one may re-load the page within 5 seconds to request the original quality images.
It is not clear how to disable this content filtering, Staff in the high-street shops were generally unaware of the problem, and technical support lines offered little help. The forums of the operators have many posts from disgruntled users asking how to disable the service or return their data card.
After encountering the problem with all the ISPs I had tested, I was relieved when I tested Three to see that they weren't using content-filtering and I had a trouble-free evening of surfing. I'm sure that the other ISPs will pick-up on this soon enough and adjust their own offerings to suit!
