Combined mobile and fixed-line broadband packages are becoming increasingly popular with consumers who want broadband access both at home and on the move.

Orange has now thrown down the gauntlet with the new combination Orange Home and Mobile Broadband package. Going for £20 a month, the bundle provides customers with up to 8Mbps ASDL broadband, a free wireless router and free evening and weekend calls via a landline, along with mobile broadband at up to 3.6Mbps with a 3GB monthly bandwidth allowance and a free USB dongle.

Unfortunately the offer isn’t open to everyone. You have to be living in one of Orange’s Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) areas to benefit from the deal, which is available on an 18 month contract. The deal is likely to persuade Orange’s rivals to reduce their prices. Currently Vodafone and O2, for example, charge £15 a month for mobile broadband alone.

Asif Aziz, Director of Broadband and Home for Orange said “We believe these new offers not only complement our existing fixed and mobile broadband service range, but also provide flexible alternatives to meet the needs of today’s 21st century customer - who quite rightly demands a premium service at the same time as best value for money.”

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High-speed broadband will be a key factor in the growth of public service broadcasting, according to a think tank. In a report published today, the Social Market Foundation suggested that funding earmarked for public service broadcasting should be diverted to ensure comprehensive broadband coverage across the UK. The economic and social policy think tank said that investing in high-speed broadband would improve Britain’s broadband infrastructure and help lessen the digital divide.

The report, which examined the relationship between technology and broadcasting, was funded by the BBC and Five. It argued that broadcasting policy needs to reflect a wider audience and focus more on the wider communications sector, including broadband, rather than exclusively on the television sector. Investing in broadband technologies would bring faster internet connections to more people, thus encouraging generation of more diverse content.

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Almost 19 out of 20 internet connections in Britain are now made via broadband, reflecting its continuing popularity, widespread availability and increasingly competitive connection packages.

The figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show 94.1% of overall internet connections in the UK between June-September 2008 were made via broadband, up from 92.8 percent in June 2008. Meanwhile dial-up connections fell by 18.6% during the same period, which resulted in a 0.4% drop in the index of all connections during the period.

There is also increasing demand for higher speed broadband. By September 57.7% of all broadband connections had a speed of 2Mbps or more, a 2% increase since June. The figures were based on the speeds advertised by ISPs, but actual broadband speeds are usually lower, depending on factors such as distance from the local exchange and line quality.

T-Mobile has launched a docking station that will allow users to share their mobile broadband connection with anyone nearby.

The Mobile Broadband Share Dock, which was originally unveiled in October, is now available in the shops. The Share Dock enables several users at once to share a mobile broadband connection. The device is exclusive to T-Mobile and is available free to customers who sign up to a £20 a month 18 month mobile broadband contract.

The Share Dock could make an ideal back-up system for small businesses which rely on an unstable consumer level broadband connection. Much like an ordinary Wi-Fi router, the dock allows users to plug in a normal mobile broadband USB dongle, and uses password protection to prevent unauthorised access to the mobile broadband network from others who are in range.

Richard Warmsley, head of internet and entertainment at T-Mobile UK said, “Mobile broadband has experienced huge growth across the market.

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The total number of broadband subscribers worldwide has reached 400 million, according to research by broadband analyst firm Point Topic. This compares with 57,200 users in 1998 and 280,890 subscribers in 1999 – an increase of almost six-fold.

“When Point Topic started researching broadband in 1998 it was still mostly in the technical trial stage. Getting to 400 million subscribers in the 10 years since then has been one of the fastest rollouts of a major new technology the world has ever seen,” said Oliver Johnson, senior analyst at Point Topic.

“Now we are in the early days of a new era, which is going to be much more about quality than quantity. The emphasis is going to shift to providing high-bandwidth, high-quality broadband that can deliver multiple, steady, pin-sharp images for applications.”

DSL is still the dominant form of broadband, but fibre optic broadband subscriptions are on the increase, from 18,000 in 2002 to four million today. The research was commissioned for the Broadband Forum.

Broadband? Afford-band, more like. People in Britain are embracing digital technology faster than any other nation, according to a new report by communications regulator Ofcom.

Of the twelve industrialised nations studied for the report, Britain offers the cheapest broadband, mobile and pay-TV rates, and is also ahead of most when it comes to broadband take-up at 60%.

Social networking is also on the up, with half the UK using websites such as Facebook, Bebo and Myspace, and 43% of the population regularly uploading photos of friends and family to the internet. The keenest social networkers were Canadians, at 55% of the population. In the USA, the birthplace of Facebook, 40% of internet users were signed up to social networking site, whilst in France the figure was as low as 27%.

Eight percent of total music sales in Britain are now made online, the highest figure of any European country with the exception of Spain. Given the healthy state of the music industry in this country, this ought to come as no surprise, although Britain lags behind the US, where almost a quarter of music sales are made digitally. Nearly a fifth of advertising revenue in Britain is generated online.
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From today the 21st of November up until Christmas Eve, any customer who signs up for any of the Mobile Broadband offers from O2 will get a Sony Ericsson T820i on Prepay bundled with it for no extra cost.

The T820i, worth £49.99, is by all accounts a fairly basic phone - it comes with Bluetooth, a 1.3 Megapixel camera, MP3 ringtones MMS capabilities (picture messages) and an FM radio. Admittedly, this isn’t the greatest phone on the planet, but a nice little stocking filler from O2 nonetheless. It functions as a phone first and foremost, and serves as an ideal back-up handset for use in emergency situations where your main phone runs out of battery.

The phone is available to those who sign up for any of the O2 Mobile Broadband deals, whether on a rolling single month basis (£15 per month, 3GB usage, one-off £99.00 fee for the USB Modem) or the standard 18 Month contract (£15 per month, 3GB usage, price of the Modem comes included). The O2 Mobile Broadband USB Modem gives users a clear indication of the speed they’re likely to get in any area thanks to the built-in LED display. The USB Modem constantly searches for the best connection and which switch seamlessley to a faster connection if one becomes available. O2 Mobile Broadband customers also get unlimited access to 6,100 Wi-Fi hot spots in the UK operated by The Cloud.

TalkTalk from the Carphone Warehouse has launched a new customisable home phone and broadband package called MyTalkTalk - a value package which allows cutomers to pay for additional services and features.

The new package was created in response to a consumer survey which suggested that, in light of the current credit crunch, 94% of broadband users don’t want to pay for features that they don’t use, and 65% would like to pick and choose the particular services they require in their broadband package.

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Sky are all set to raise £450 million in a bond issue to institutional investors in order to stump up some massive coin which is allegedly earmarked for the acquisition of the UK tentacle of Tiscali.

Tiscali have recently confirmed that they have been in talks with Sky over a potential deal – the Italy-based ISP and telecoms outfit announced late last year that the long term goal for 2008 was to find themselves the right buyer.

It is uncertain whether or not the deal includes Sky taking over the Tiscali TV IPTV platform, on which there are already a number of Sky channels. If the deal goes ahead, Tiscali TV, which began life as Homechoice, could potentially be rebranded under the Sky Picnic name, in the event that a deal with Ofcom is worked out.

The move would not only see Sky leapfrog into third place behind broadband and digital TV rivals BT and Virgin Media and ahead of Carphone Warehouse, whose main broadband concern TalkTalk is also reportedly up for sale.

There are rumours that Sky are also interested in buying up TalkTalk along with Tiscali, but if this were true, then the satellite giant would probably need to dig a little deeper – the TalkTalk arm of Carphone’s business is valued at a cool £1bn.

Sky Broadband Base (up to 2Mbps speed) has always been free to punters who bundled the broadband service with a Sky Digital TV subscription. However, come March 2009, the cost of the service will rise from £0 to £5 a month – but only if the customer doesn’t sign up for Sky Talk, the fixed-line call package.

This price hike is something of a moot point really; as Sky themselves say, Most of our Sky Broadband customers already take all three services and so the planned changes will have no impact on them at all. As a Sky Talk customer, you will continue to make the biggest savings on your Sky Broadband service with no change to your monthly subscription.”

The full list of changes, not due to take place until next March, is as follows:

Base – currently free rising to £5 (or free with Sky Talk)
Mid – currently £5 rising to £10 (or £5 with Sky Talk)
Max – currently £10 rising to £15 (or £10 with Sky Talk)