Mobile broadband guide
If you're new to mobile broadband and are wondering what it is and what all the fuss is about, then you should read our comprehensive
guide to mobile broadband.
Mobile broadband is a generic term used to describe fast internet access on mobile phones or laptops whilst on the move - free from the ties of a fixed phone line. All the major networks: Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, 3 Mobile and O2 offer mobile broadband solutions.
The only equipment you need is a mobile broadband "dongle" which looks similar to a USB flash drive and holds a 3G mobile SIM card - the same as those in 3G mobile phones.
Find out more...
Labels: dongle, information, mobile broadband
T-Mobile previews mobile broadband Wi-Fi hub
T-Mobile has revealed a sneak peek of its home hub for
mobile broadband, which allows up to three users to connect to a single mobile broadband USB modem using Wi-Fi.
It's a neat alternative to landline broadband, with a simple connection for the USB modem, as well as a built-in ethernet port for devices without Wi-Fi inside.
T-Mobile says its Share Dock 100 will be bundled free with
mobile broadband packages costing £20 per month, or available separately at £100.
This follows news earlier in the year that
3 Mobile has plans to bring mobile broadband to the home too. The firm let slip that, since some customers are using mobile dongles as an alternative to a home landline, it's considering the launch of a special router to share the connection between laptops using Wi-Fi.
We can only assume it's still in development, because there's still no word on pricing or a release date. Stay tuned for more as soon as we hear it.
There are alternatives if you're in a rush to share your mobile broadband at home; we covered this in our '
How to use and share mobile broadband at home' article back in August.
Labels: dongle, information, quick-news, T-Mobile
Virgin Mobile launches mobile broadband
The long-awaited entry of Virgin Mobile into the mobile broadband market has finally arrived.
According to
Virgin, their new service offers speeds of up to 3.6Mbps (depending signal strength), is available on an 18-month contract and comes with 3GB of data every month. The ISP claims this is sufficient to send 2,000 plain text emails as well as surf the web for 100 hours and make 100 two-minute downloads every month.
Priced at £15 per month, subscribers will receive a free USB modem that can be plugged into a laptop and uses the mobile phone network to provide access to the web. Each further GB of data transfer costs £15.
"The launch of our
mobile broadband product means UK consumers can now get all of their broadband needs from the UK's leading broadband expert", said Neil Berkett, Virgin Media CEO.
The ISP is also offering the first three months free, to any XL home customers that sign up to the Mobile Broadband service.
Labels: information, mobile broadband, Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile to launch mobile broadband in Q4
Managing director of Virgin Mobile, Graeme Oxby, told
Mobile News a renewed agreement with Virgin Mobile's MVNO host network,
T-Mobile, will allow it to produce its own mobile broadband proposition.
Oxby said the MVNO, which in July reached half a million contract customers, would push the new offering as part of a "complete suite" of services, alongside Virgin Media's existing fixed-line offerings.
He said: "It's been quite difficult to do much about
mobile broadband; the new agreement changes that. It's a large part of our strategy for next year; joining mobile broadband to fixed broadband to complete our suite of services. There will be quite a lot of development now the fundamentals are in place.
"We said we would do something around this in Q4, but we have no specific details yet. It's exciting because it glues together all our offerings quite nicely."
Labels: information, mobile broadband, Virgin Mobile
T-Mobile has best website
Benchmarking company Global Reviews finds
T-Mobile's website rates best for customer satisfaction among all UK network operators
T-Mobile has come top of an independent customer poll of mobile networks' websites.
Independent benchmarking company Global Reviews asked more than 1,000 web customers for their views of the UK networks' websites. It assessed sites against more than 500 criteria, including content and usability.
While all the networks' sites increased their scores for online customer satisfaction since the last tally in January, T-mobile came first with 68 per cent, while 3 was last with 53 per cent.
Networks scored well compared with other sectors. Their average was 60 per cent, 20 per cent higher than the hotel sector and 12 per cent better than credit card websites.
A Global Reviews spokeswoman said: "T-Mobile received high scores in almost all categories and a significant improvement in site utility. But it improved just one per cent since January and others are gaining."
"Orange improved nine per cent, O2 five, 3 by four and Virgin Mobile three. Overall the industry average is up by seven per cent."
On
Orange, she said: "It made big improvements across the board and its score for customer support online has increased from 45 to 61 per cent."
Despite coming last,
3 Mobile also made strides forward. The spokesperson added: "3 is catching up fast."
"It saw a 15 per cent increase in the quality of its content and tools score, nine per cent in customer support and six per cent in the process. Site utility is the next areas it needs to focus on."
Vodafone increased its score but only made it to third place, while
O2 came fourth. Virgin came fifth but was one of the most improved sites.
Labels: 3-Mobile, information, o2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone
Orange UK to open 60 new stores
Orange UK has announced that it plans to open around 60 new retail stores throughout this year and into 2009 across sites including Southampton, Bristol Cabot Circus and White City in London, building on Orange's existing 338 outlets. The company is also undertaking an extensive refurbishment programme with another 100 stores set to undergo a makeover in the next year.
The new and re-furbished stores will be based on the design of Cardiff's flagship city centre shop, following its success since the opening last year. The stores will be designed to enhance the shopping experience, display the full product range from mobiles to
mobile broadband and laptops. Features will include modernised displays for PAYM phones, making it easier for customers to browse and view the products on show as well as a dedicated space highlighting Orange only offers.
Labels: information, Orange
Mobile broadband to drive laptop market?
The Times has published an
interesting article today describing the industry motivation for providing free laptops with 3G
Mobile Broadband contracts; it says...
Mobile phone companies have long offered free handsets to customers to encourage them to sign up for contracts, but now they have a new lure to persuade people to part with their hard-earned money – free laptop computers.
In doing so, they are threatening to spark a boom in the laptop market and to generate a return on the fortunes they invested on bidding for 3G bandwidths in 2000.
Shaun Collins, managing director of CCS Insight, a technology analysis group, believes that
mobile broadband is the best thing to happen to mobile operators since the text message, in terms of its ability to drive revenue. He said: "The most important thing is that no subscriber stops their voice and text package – it's always an addition."
"Some laptops are cheaper to buy than mobile phones, so why wouldn't operators do it? The sheer economics of it means it's a wonderful opportunity."
Mr Collins expects to see a boom in the laptop market as a result. "It beckons an explosion in laptop growth and an explosion in connectivity and that's very potent. Most of the additional growth in the laptop market is likely to be connected devices.
"How often do you change your laptop now? Probably never. But if they were free every two years? It would encourage people to think of laptops like mobiles. Laptop prices are also falling as fast as mobile prices."
Read the full article
here.
Labels: industry insight, information, laptop, mobile broadband
T-Mobile launches video-on-demand site
T-Mobile has launched a new video-on-demand service, like Apple TV for mobile phones.
Customers can access the Video on Demand Plus service through T-Mobile's 't-zones' portal or its Web 'n' Walk service. Video clips can be watched either on mobile or online and a 15 minute clip costs anything between 50p to £1.50 and longer clips can cost up to £5.
T-Mobile interactive and video manager Sylvia Radacovska said: "Video on Demand Plus is an innovative service which offers customers more value and flexibility to consume their video content across mobile and PC."
Labels: industry insight, information, T-Mobile
Ofcom reports surge in mobile broadband
Ofcom's annual review, released today, reports that every day in 2007, the average consumer spent 7 hours and 9 minutes watching TV, on the phone, using the internet or using other services. Since 2002, mobile use has doubled and PC and laptop use has grown fourfold.
Key facts:
- Communications industry revenue topped £51.2bn in 2007
- Average households spend £93.63 per month on communications services
- 87.2% have digital television
- 80% of new TV sales are high-definition sets
- 40% buy communications services in a bundled package
- 44% of adults use text messaging every day
- 36% of adults use the net every day
Source: Ofcom market reviewThe real surge, though, came in the use of
mobile broadband after a big marketing push by mobile phone companies selling mobile broadband "dongles". Between February and June this year, monthly sales rose from 69,000 to 133,000 a month.
According to Ofcom figures, two million people say they have used
mobile broadband via a dongle or similar device and three-quarters of them say they use it at home as well as on the move - further evidence that the mobile operators are beginning to compete with fixed-line businesses for broadband customers.
3 Mobile network recently put a figure of over half a million on the number of total dongles it has sold to date, accounting for around 16% of its total subscriber base.
Vodafone reported sales of 3.2 million across Europe by the end of June. While the company doesn't split out regional sales, market sources put U.K. mobile broadband sales to date at close to half a million as well.
T-Mobile has made a concerted push into mobile broadband in the past few months, and reported that its share of total dongle sales in June was around 27%, citing data provided by research firm GfK.
O2 and
Orange were not able to provide figures for the number of dongles sold or their market share.
Over 80% of
mobile broadband sales cited by Ofcom in the five months to June were on a contract basis, with typical contracts worth around £10 to £20 per month, about half the amount mobile operators get from their handset contract customers. Ofcom projects that if 3 million people in the U.K. took up
mobile broadband in the next few years, it could generate around £540 million for the mobile industry.
You can read the full (365 page) Ofcom review
here.
Labels: dongle, industry insight, information, mobile broadband
How to use and share mobile broadband at home
Many people have already invested in a monthly contract for 3G mobile broadband at home or on the road, but the question is how to share that connection?
Typically, home users will need to share an internet connection between more than one PC. The good news is that this is entirely possible with 3G mobile broadband. Many home users are even considering ditching traditional fixed-line broadband altogether, however they require a robust system to share their 3G at home. In fact, for some in remote areas out of range of fixed-line ADSL service, 3G mobile broadband may be the only option if they want broadband.
So, what do you need to share a 3G mobile broadband connection? Well, in simple terms, all you need is a router - but one that can accept a 3G dongle instead of (or in addition to) a wired connection to the fixed-line ADSL service. 3G mobile broadband routers enable you to share your mobile broadband at home, or even to create your own portable hot spot while travelling, at shows, exhibitions, field trips etc.
One such router is the
Billion BiPAC 7402GXL. Priced at a reasonable £88 incl VAT RRP, the Billion BiPAC 7402GXL is compatible with Vodafone, T-Mobile, 3, Orange, O2 (dongle not included) - you can
check compatibility with your dongle here. Billion have led the market in the development and release of 3G routers and their UK MD Edward Kung has said: "[A 3G router] is the ideal product for the latest boom in 3G broadband – and Billion is enabling consumers to maximise their connection easily and flexibly. The BiPAC 7402GXL is a very useful gadget for home and business users at an unbeatable price!"
Basic setup is relatively straightforward; simply plug your 3G mobile broadband dongle into the USB port on the back of the router, connect you PC (either via and ethernet cable or wirelessly), check the router configuration and that's it; 3G mobile broadband available to your entire suite of PC's.
A word of caution though; just remember your data limit. It is obviously far more difficult to keep an accurate monitor of your data usage if your kids, granny or anyone else in the family has unfettered access. A couple of films downloaded or an episode of Eastenders on the iPlayer will quickly devour your allowance. Use our
broadband usage calculator to get an idea of how much data you might need.
Update:3 Mobile now offer
this mobile broadband router designed specifically for sharing 3 Mobile mobile broadband from a single dongle.
Labels: information, laptop, mobile broadband, network coverage
