Over at Open (finds, minds, conversations) Antony has been saying adieu to his 3 mobile broadband dongle.

This has placed him in a reflective mood, and his overriding thought on the experience is: “no one should be without a dongle in this day and age - especially in the UK.”

This is something his dongle-sharing amigo will undoubtedly testify to. In a moment reminiscent of Gandalf’s attempts to prise the ring from an oversized hairy-foot named Bilbo Baggins, Antony thanked his pal for returning the dongle and went to step from the train they were riding. Only a second before his departure did he realise that his pal still had it! ‘Tis a powerful thing that dongle. As Antony suggests, “I swear my soon-to-be-3G-cold-turkey colleague was a beat away from calling it his ‘precious’…”

That Antony’s dongle is the object at the centre of all tyranny, is, I’m fairly certain a fallacy. What is for sure though, is with WiFi being sporadically available and often expensive, 3’s dongle is more convenient than if Mount Doom had been at the bottom of Frodo’s garden.