Internet Dongle: Does the USB Stick Still Have a Purpose?

The USB internet dongle was the answer to a problem that has largely gone away. Phones now share their connection, laptops increasingly have a SIM slot of their own, and a battery-powered hotspot does the same job for several devices at once. There are still three cases where the stick wins.

What a dongle is, against the alternatives

A USB dongle is a modem with a SIM in it that plugs into a computer and provides a connection to that one machine, drawing its power from the port. It does not create a Wi-Fi network and it does not have a battery.

A portable hotspot, sometimes called a MiFi, is the same modem with a battery and a Wi-Fi radio. It connects several devices, works without a host computer, and lasts a working day.

Tethering is your phone doing the hotspot's job with no additional hardware and no additional plan. For most people, most of the time, this is the correct answer and the other two are solutions looking for a problem.

The three cases where a dongle is still right

A machine that must be online unattended and reliably, where a battery is a liability rather than a feature. A monitoring computer, a till, a device in a cupboard, anything where you want the connection to come back on its own after a power cut without somebody pressing a button.

A locked-down or older computer where installing nothing is a requirement. A dongle presents itself as a network device and needs no account, no pairing and no phone in the room.

Single-device use where security policy forbids a Wi-Fi hotspot. A wired modem creates no network for anything else to join, which in some workplaces is the deciding factor.

Where it is the wrong choice

Any situation with more than one device, where a hotspot does the same job for all of them. Any situation away from mains power for long, where the dongle drains the laptop it is plugged into. And any situation your phone already covers, which is most of them.

Modern laptops with an eSIM make it redundant entirely: the modem is already inside the machine and needs only a data plan, with no protruding hardware to lose or break.

A dongle also fixes you to one network. A hotspot or an eSIM can take a different SIM or profile easily; a dongle sold locked to a provider cannot.

Buying one without wasting money

Buy unlocked and buy the plan separately. A dongle bundled with a fixed data allowance from one provider is the version most likely to become useless when the plan does, and it removes your ability to change network if coverage disappoints.

Check the network bands it supports against the network you intend to use. An old dongle from a cupboard may not support the bands current networks rely on, which presents as poor speed rather than as an error.

Then buy a data-only SIM, which costs less than a voice plan for the same allowance, and prefer a rolling term until you have confirmed coverage where the device will live.

The coverage test that matters

Signal at the exact location, not the postcode. If the device is destined for a cupboard, a basement or the back of a building, that is where to test. Those are precisely the places a checker is least reliable about.

A phone on the same network held at the spot is the free version of that test. If the phone struggles there, the dongle will struggle there, and an external aerial is the only remedy worth considering.

Where signal is marginal, a hotspot with an external antenna socket is a better purchase than a dongle, because a small aerial in a window frequently converts an unusable connection into a working one.

The old dongle in the drawer

A lot of these are sitting in drawers from the era when networks handed them out, and it is worth knowing whether yours is usable before buying anything. Two things decide it: whether it is locked to a provider, and whether it supports the network bands in current use.

The lock is usually the harder problem. A device locked to a network that no longer sells the plan it was bundled with is generally not worth the effort of unlocking, and the request has to go to the original provider rather than to a shop.

The band question is answerable from the model number in a couple of minutes. If it predates the current generation of networks it will connect and be slow, which is worse than not working, because the failure looks like poor coverage rather than obsolete hardware and people spend a fortnight blaming the SIM.

What to buy instead, in one line each

One laptop, occasional use, phone in your pocket: nothing, use tethering. Several devices or a full working day: a portable hotspot with its own battery. A newer laptop: a data plan on the eSIM already inside it. An unattended machine that must reconnect by itself: a dongle, unlocked, with a data-only SIM.

See the tethering and data-SIM options, why a tethering cap matters and the home-connection version.

Frequently asked questions