BT to re-enter mobile market?
BT is considering plans to form a joint venture with T-Mobile and 3 Mobile.
Eight years ago, BT spun off its mobile arm, Cellnet, in a bid to raise capital to cut its debt. Cellnet went on to become O2 and was acquired in 2007 by Telefonica for the £18 billion.
T-Mobile and 3 already share their radio networks and have signed a number of agreements; the most significant of which was a new company they both created in December 2007 called Mobile Broadband Network limited. The trio have already worked together with T-mobile and 3 agreeing with BT to use their 21CN solution.
BT tried to launch a mobile network a few years ago, called Fusion as it partnered with Vodafone to become an MVNO. It proved to be a costly mistake with less than 50,000 customers signing over two years.
BT doesn't have much of a choice. It is possibly the only big telecommunications company in the world that doesn't have a powerful mobile arm and this is leaving it vulnerable to competitors and the acceleration of mobile broadband takeup.
Labels: BT Mobile, industry insight
BT dips toe in mobile broadband market
BT is giving away
mobile broadband connections to customers on its business internet tariffs.
Customers who renew or take out new contracts on selected BT Business Total Broadband tariffs will be given a "free" mobile dongle and connection.
The service is based on Vodafone's 3G network and comes with a download limit of 1GB. BT customers do, however, also receive 2,000 free minutes a month on BT's Openzone network of Wi-Fi hotspots.
In total, it means businesses can receive an ADSL broadband connection, mobile broadband and Wi-Fi from £27 a month. "We're adding value to our broadband offer at a time when businesses are up against it on costs," David Hughes, BT's director of wireless broadband told PC Pro. "It allows them to stay connected all the time."
BT, as with
other mobile broadband providers, has decided to turn on website image compression by default. However, they don't give you the option of turning the compression off, unlike Vodafone's Mobile Connect. The BT software currently only works on Windows PCs, although the company claims it working on support for Mac OS X.
The mobile broadband deal is currently only open to businesses who renew or take out new deals on BT Business Total Broadband options 2 or 3. So what about the millions of business customers that BT has already signed up?
"We haven't got an upgrade package," Hughes admitted, although said the company would look into such an option. "We've started with business - we'll look at whether it's suitable for consumers after that," said Neil Laidler, director of Mobility BT Business.
Update:
BT Business Mobile Broadband, is also available as a 'standalone' option at £17.50 (+ VAT)/month.
Labels: BT Mobile, industry insight, mobile broadband
What is a MVNO?
A Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) is a mobile operator that does not own its own spectrum and usually does not have its own network infrastructure. Instead, MVNO's have business arrangements with traditional mobile operators to buy minutes of use (MOU) for sale to their own customers.
There are three primary MVNO's in the UK currently: Virgin Mobile (
T-Mobile), Tesco Mobile (
O2) and BT Mobile (
Vodafone).
The MVNO market-leader
T-Mobile's new MVNO partnership with Ikea went live today. You can expect to see many more such partnerships announced over the coming months. All UK network operators are pursuing new MVNO business in order to grow their service revenues.
The UK wholesale market is estimated to be worth £1 billion at present, and to grow to twice that by 2012.
Labels: BT Mobile, industry insight, o2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone
Virgin Mobile to launch mobile broadband
In its latest set of quarterly results,
Virgin Mobile has revealed it will be unveiling its own mobile broadband offering in the fourth quarter of this year.
The move comes about due to a recent renegotiation of the virtual mobile operator's agreement with its network supplier,
T-Mobile, for the cost of voice and data services. As a result, the operator says it now "will also be able to price more competitively in the growing mobile data usage market".
If Virgin's mobile broadband product resembles
T-Mobile's own offering, customers can expect a theoretical maximum of 7.2Mbps within the M25 area. T-Mobile also launched its HSUPA network in July, promising effective upload speeds of 1.4Mbps.
Virgin becomes the last major operator to launch a mobile broadband service, following rival O2 which made a 3G data product available to existing customers in April this year. BT Mobile, a relatively small player, may release details of their mobile broadband plans later in the summer.
Labels: BT Mobile, mobile broadband, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile
