Are we talking 3G? Many a dongle has memory for setup drivers.
Unmounting this memory that shows up as a drive, gives access to the 3G
system. Most work using PPP to connect. If you edit the connection you
can check the automatic reconnect box and Ubuntu will reconnect if the
connection is lost. On 9.04 and 9.10 I had to install the GPPP apt. In
10.04 the PPP apt is already installed.

Using a 3G card in Ubuntu is not all that hard, I found instructions on
the Sprint website and setup at least 10 systems using them.

Yes 3G. (soon 4G here in Sweden). When I go to the drop down and open the
VPN I can highlight the options there but even under PPP there is no option
for automatic reconnect.

Here are the screen shots:
/home/christopher/Desktop/Screenshot.png
/home/christopher/Desktop/Screenshot-1.png
/home/christopher/Desktop/Screenshot-2.png

This latest session took no less than 7 restarts, each with the routine of
me clicking the drop down icon and the '3 wideband 1' selection option 3
times (1st time a 1.5 sec rotating icon, 2nd time a hint of rotation and a
lable of 'you are now dissconnected', 3rd time a durational rotation -
which only sometimes achieves a connection. When I do get on line I have
good speed and stability for the most. But right now I am off line though -
through no choice of my own. I have unchecked the box under file but there
is no automatic reconnect . To send this I will probably have to go through
the whole rigmarole again.

The dongle I have is new, the old one wasn't designed for the 16mb speeds
that we now have so you lost me on the memory issue. Can you give me an URL
to the sprint site you mention please?

Sorry, I looked and relized that the check box says connect automaticly

Mobile broadband is very touchy about signal strength and from what
you are saying it looks like the connection is being dropped due to
that. When Firefox goes south does Chrome also go ? BTW - Firefox will
enable the 'work off-line mode if it loses connection to the internet,
as will IE in Windows for that matter so it's not a 'Linux' thing !!

Also Right Click on the network icon and select 'Edit Connections'
then go to the Mobile Broadband section, click on the entry in there
and then on 'Edit' and tick the box 'Make Available to all users'.
You'll need to give your password but you should find the connection
works better now.

Yeah everything live dies. I didn't know that 'work off line' would
trigger automatically - me not like!
But it is wierd because I watch a lot of full length streaming without any
problems - seems like as soon as I'm not active for 10 minutes or so I get
shut down. However, that doesn't explain the erratisk start ups.

Thanks, I have checked all users - no difference unfortunately.

Power management???????????????