It’s got to be one of the silliest names for a device that I’ve come across, I mean whoever came up with ‘dongle’ for a name; it just sounds a bit daft. Having said that though the broadband dongle is for me certainly one of the most lovable of gadgetry mobile things around. Can you actually call a usb dongle lovable? Well anyway I think it is a lovely, small, shiny device.

We want high-speed internet on the move and that’s precisely what a dongle gives us. A dongle is a portable modem that plugs into the USB port of your laptop or computer and provides internet access via the 3G mobile network. They are also known as mobile modems or commonly as a usb dongle. Another means of internet access on the move could be your mobile phone, but this is invariably slow and expensive. The dongle on the other hand is quite simply a neat little device that plugs into your laptop and without too much of a kafuffle gives you access to 3g mobile internet access.

Dongles are being hailed as the next big thing in broadband, so much so that some consider it may even replace fixed-line as the most popular medium for accessing the internet. Taking into account the rising popularity and demand for mobile broadband and the fact that a lot of us now have a preference for mobile phones rather than a landline in our households, the demise of the fixed line may well be on the horizon. Silly name or not the dongle looks like it’s here to stay for awhile, well at least till the next big thing in mobile broadband emerges.