3g Wifi Dongles with router

As regards using dongles with laptops, it is technically possible to connect one to certain models of routers with built in usb ports and then share the signal.

I have done this twice for clients here near Lagos. However, bandwith and speed are less than a Sapo connection. In both my cases, these were rural hostelries. At one stage, one had five pc's working on the system although the webpage load times were relatively slow when all five were being used.

The other unit has two computers operating (the owner's XP machine and a linux/ubuntu guest machine) and these work fine, although there can be periodic signal drops.

The problem is that most commercially available routers that work with dongles are quite expensive. I managed, however, to find a freeware firmware download from a guy in the Czech Republic which allowed me to flash the bios of a relatively cheap Asus router (€ 75.00) and connect the Vodafone Dongle.

www.zapp.pt offer a wireless internet solution here in Portugal also using old radio-telephone frequencies. They also offer a router option. See http://www.zapp.pt/equipamento/routerasus.php.

As mentioned above, and I cannot emphasize this enough, do not buy any gear until you are absolutely sure that you can receive not only a good mobile signal but a good 3G mobile signal. A normal GPRS mobile signal will only transmit data at 64 kpbs/sec. (Not much more than old dial-up) You must make sure that you can receive a good 3G signal to get speeds approaching broadband velocity.