Virgin Mobile Ovation USB Modem Review

November 7, 2010 - Virgin Mobile's Broadband2Go USB Modem, the Ovation MC760 manufactured by Novatel Wireless, is a handy little tool for getting online with your laptop or netbook on the go. With Virgin Mobile's new service plans offering unlimited data access for $40 a month with no contract, the $79.99 USB modem can be a great deal -- if you can get decent coverage from the Sprint 3G network, that is.

Unfortunately, although Virgin Mobile offers excellent service value and the device has a neat 2-in-1 feature my experience with the Ovation MC760 running on the Sprint network (Virgin Mobile is a Sprint subsidiary) was less than optimal. Though I had excellent signal strength and the coverage maps show I'm in an area (NYC suburbs) with good 3G coverage, Web pages took really long to load and often timed out. True, I'm used to 25MB speeds at home from Verizon FiOS, but it wasn't just a case of having to adjust for lower speed levels. The Virgin Mobile site says average downlink speeds on the service are 600 to 1400 Kbps (or 0.6 to 1.4 Mbps), but testing the modem speed at speedtest.net showed only a 0.11 Mbps download speed and 0.28 Mbps upload. Meanwhile, the speedtest on my Android device (T-Mobile network) showed 1.7 Mbps download and 0.53 Mbps upload results.

I also tested the Ovation USB modem on two other laptops, just in case, as well as in three different locations beyond my home, all with the same results.

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