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Test of Orange "Business Everywhere" - started!

It has taken me some time to get this 3G broadband device working. I can't actually blame Orange for any part of the delay; I can, and should, blame Huawei, whose previous 3G dongles were installed beforehand.

The problem: the drivers for the Huawei device broke my network connectivity.

That information could be worth a lot to you. Equally, it may be nonsense. There's no way for me to tell what version of the software you will install; and if you install either of the devices I did, you may get the version I did. Or, you may get an up to date version, and that may work without problems.

Also, for all I know, "works without problems" only applies until you pull the thing out, as I did, and try to install something else.

Here's the problem: these devices, very cleverly, are not just wireless modems. They are Flash memory disks. All the installation software you need for them, therefore, is pre-loaded onto the disk inside the dongle. And it seems that there isn't a smart way of updating this before installing.

That's quite logical: the whole point of installing these devices is that you need them. They aren't the cheapest way of getting broadband, and so it's a pretty good bet that you are using a dongle because you have nothing else. If you don't have Internet access, you can't download an update, duh...

The result, for me, has been that I've had to completely (and I mean completely!) re-install Windows on two of my company laptops. Each machine was equipped with a full working set of network drivers before; each of them lost all LAN and Internet connectivity after, the dongles were shoved in.

When I first tried installing this Business Everywhere device - built by Option, and the Icon 225 device - it sprang into action brightly and swiftly, installed itself - and then ... nothing. Not for a moment did I suspect that the device was faulty: and it isn't. It was a broken Windows installation.

My previous experience was with the Huawei dongle, and it was installed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, back in February. That, too, completely failed to work. But there, I had the full technical resources of Huawei and Qualcomm behind me. I was on the GSMA booth, and I offered the suggestion that until they got it working, I would haunt the stand.

It took them two hours - two hours I'd quite like to get back! but they got it going... and when I got back to London, I found that they had comprehensively smashed my main Internet links.

It didn't matter whether I tried Ethernet or WLAN or plugging in my Nokia or any other mobile phone; all I got was "This connection has limited or no connectivity." And, finally, most unkindest cut of all, when I plugged the Huawei device back in, it had stopped working, too.

Re-installing Windows isn't a trivial operation, but in the end, it was the only way to move forward. And, exactly as I expected, as soon as the machine woke up after the operation, it found Ethernet, WLAN and the Option dongle without hesitation or hiccup.

More to come as tests progress.