A new London-based company is offering users with broadband trouble a way to get by while their regular ISP sorts itself out.
SOS Broadband, a company based in Bromley, London, says it can provide users with dial-up access if their normal net connection decides the take a dive.
The company also claims its dial-up service is up to 5x faster than regular dial-up, creating "broadband like" performance. Last time we checked, nobody had come up with an amazing new baseband modulation scheme, so we can only assume the company uses data compression of some sort... nothing new.
If by the end of day one there's still no broadband at the premises, SOS Broadband will speedily ship out a "Hi Speed Mobile Internet modem" (3G HSDPA by the looks) to the customer, giving them a couple of megabits to play with, assuming good mobile network coverage and appropriate 3G support.
£6.99 a month covers you in the event of a broadband breakdown.
Alternatively, if you want a temporary net access deployment somewhere (or didn't subscribe to the service) you can pay for a temporary wireless broadband connection.
SOS Broadband has a free technical support line and even a stock of spare modems/routers in case subscribers are having hardware rather than line trouble.
Larger businesses are unlikely to need such services, hopefully having their own measures in place.
And there are routers on the market that support 3G modems as fail-over devices - so you could in theory create the same service as SOS Broadband offers for yourself, provided you're savvy enough and willing to fork out for the 3G data subscription.
At £6.99/mo only two home/office users are allowed access through the service. It remains to be seen how many people will consider it a worthwhile service under such a restriction.
Nevertheless, it's an interesting concept from a company that has seen just one possible way to utilise 3G wireless data.
