It is only in the last few months that this new much cheaper mobile broadband service is now appearing at an affordable level. This style of mobile broadband is quite a new idea and it is slightly different to the older versions that were available. Before when using something like the mobile PCMCIA network cards with a sim card, you were basically using the mobile network as if you were connected via a WAP/2G phone. But this new version takes full advantage of the much faster 3G and 3.5G network infrastructure, with the big difference being that your connection is using a sim card and device designed purely for internet access and not a full mobile phone contract.

As for the term dongle. Originally that was right. A dongle was a hardware device that acted as a software key. We used to need them before software, mainly from Matrox, Discreet/Autodesk, and some Adobe software would work. 3DSMAX, After Effects Pro, Speed Razor, Discreet Edit and Combustion etc... all needed a hardware dongle to be present, connected to the parallel port or the software wouldn't run.

But the term Dongle has since become more generalised. It now refers to any type of device that connects to a port to allow something else to happen. Sort of the computer term for catalyst. So it could be used for any type of connector, converter, usb flash drive, wireless network adapter etc...