I setup a USB 3G wireless internet connection on a PC that was in a slightly rural area… ie they couldn’t get ADSL, and Optus mobile coverage was virtually nil.

The customer initially went with Telstra, but backed out when she found out the phone salesman lied about costs and features.

So she gets a Vodafone connection.

I setup the software, try out the modem, get onto google, do a search… it all seems to be working well.

Then the internet stops working.

The modem signal strength is 3/5 bars… so that should be a problem.

However, over the course of the next 45 minutes, I find the signal strength can vary from 1 bar to 3 bars…

Sometimes connecting to the internet works for a few minutes, other times I just get an error RAS 691

In the end, I can only conclude that either the signal strength is too variable to get a good internet connection, or there is a fault with the small USB modem.

An external modem with a more powerful antenna should make the connection a lot more reliable.