Industry giants unite to push mobile broadband in laptops

Mobile phone companies, chip makers and laptop manufacturers are joining forces to push built-in support for mobile broadband technology on laptop computers.

The alliance will build wireless chips into the computers which will accelerate current 3G speeds and work with future 4G networks. A service mark will identify laptops with the integrated mobile technology. The branded laptops are expected to be on shop shelves in 91 countries by Christmas.

At their fastest, current mobile internet technologies, which include High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and Long Term Evolution, support web browsing speeds of up to 7 megabits per second. However, such high speeds are currently available only at airports and in parts of central London.

“It’s comparable to fixed broadband services and close to what you get in a Wi-Fi hot spot,” said Mike O’Hara, a spokesman for the GSM Alliance, which brokered the deal to produce the modules and build them into laptops. The GSM Alliance is a trade body that represents 80% of the world’s mobile phone companies.

“You can go to an operator’s store, buy a laptop and it will be already fitted so you can go online instantly,” O’Hara added. “That’s a powerful proposition. There’s a natural evolution such as we saw with Wi-Fi which at first used to need an external card and became embedded.”

Continue Reading »

Apple to give away MacBook laptops with O2 Broadband?

Word on the street says that Apple and O2 are about to launch their own laptop and broadband bundle deal, in a bid to emulate the popular connection-and-computer combos that have been on offer from the likes of Orange, AOL and the Carphone Warehouse for the last year or so.

The two companies are thought to be offering customers who sign up for either of O2′s mobile and home broadband services the choice of purchasing an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop either free, or for a heavily discounted price.

We presume, given the pricey nature of Apple stuff that the laptops won’t be free, but we can at least expect some form of price subsidy as part of the bargain. Then again, Apple surprised everyone with the release of the new iPhone 3G, which turned out to be significantly cheaper than everyone expected, so we could be in for a similar surprise this time round.

Currently, 3 Mobile are offering punters who sign up for their 5GB Broadband Plus plan for 24 Months a free HP 550 laptop, and Orange are giving away an Asus Eee PC 900 with every 18 Month 3GB contract.

AOL customers who sign up for the Wireless Plus package can currently claim a free Acer Aspire 5315 Laptop to every customer who signs up, and Vodafone are giving away a Sony NR32 with their 24 Month 3GB mobile broadband deal.

Vodafone announces laptop package with in-built mobile broadband

Vodafone is the latest network to announce a laptop package with mobile broadband. The company has made a deal with Dell to sell its mini-notebook, the Inspiron Mini 9 in some countries in Europe.

Vodafone has said that the new laptop deal will become available in “key European Markets”, although it is unclear yet which countries these will be. Neither has Vodafone given an exact idea of pricing or a release date, but has said the deal will kick off sometime in “late September” this year.

Vodafone is by no means the first operator to offer a combined notebook and mobile broadband deal. Currently 3 has a package with the HP 2133 Mini-note, while Orange customers are entitled to an Asus eee 900 with its laptop-plus-mobile-broadband package. However, both packages include a separate laptop and dongle, whereas the Vodafone package will have mobile broadband integrated into the notebook.

The Inspiron Mini 9 has comes with an 8.9 inch LED display, and has a built in webcam. It is extremely light at just 1.035kg. The notebook is also sold directly through Dell’s website priced at £299.

A spokesman for Vodafone said: “The recent acceleration in the take up of mobile broadband has demonstrated just how hungry consumers are for Internet access. Building on our long relationship with Dell, the availability of the Inspiron Mini 9 will further enhance what a customer can achieve with mobile broadband whilst on the move”.

Mobile Broadband threat to traditional ISPs

Traditional ISPs are having to fight harder than ever to retain their customers as more and more of us are switching to mobile broadband.

According to the recent YouGov Dongle Track Report the increasing popularity of mobile broadband could pose a serious threat to Internet Service Providers offering fixed-line connections. The survey found that one in eight mobile broadband subscribers have either abandoned their fixed line ISP or opted for a mobile internet service instead of a traditional ISP. A further 5% of those subscribing to both fixed-line and mobile broadband are planning on dropping their ISP service within the coming year. The mobile networks – Orange, Vodafone, O2, 3 and T-Mobile all offer a mobile broadband service.

According to YouGov “With increasing numbers of households dispensing with their landlines (13% according to Ofcom) accessing the Internet through the mobile phone network is a viable option especially for the young and mobile.”

Continue Reading »

3 Mobile wade into Mobile Broadband Laptop battle

3 Mobile are following in the footsteps of both Orange, Vodafone and AOL by wading into the free laptop battle with all guns blazing. The new deals from 3 see customers able to pick and choose from three differently specced Hewlett-Packard lappies available on a number of the higher end £30 monthly Mobile Broadband contracts from 3.

The three offers (no pun intended) are as follows:

• An HP 530 laptop with 1GB of memory, a 120GB hard drive and Vista Home Basic – available on an 18 month contract from £35 per month or a 24 month contract from £30 per month.
• An HP 2133 laptop with 1GB of memory, a 120GB hard drive and Vista Home Basic – available on a 24 month contract from £35 per month.
• An HP DV6910 Pavilion laptop with 3GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive and Vista Home Basic – available on a 24 month contract from £40 per month.

A 3 Mobile USB modem comes included with all of the laptop deals – customer can pick and choose between black and white versions of the Stick modems, which currently allow users to connect at speeds of up to 3.6Mbps. All in all, the cost of the contracts against the retail value of each of the machines at the time of writing sees you saving a couple of hundred pounds if you were to buy a similarly powered machine and sign up to the 3 Mobile Broadband plans, which are similar to the Plus 18 Month and Plus 24 Month plans, albeit with a faster potential download speed.

Carphone Warehouse to give free laptops to staff

Carphone Warehouse has invested £3million in training staff to sell laptops effectively. The broadband and mobile phone retailer is aiming to sell 1 million laptops a year.

The six-week intensive training programme concludes with an exam. Members of staff who pass the test have been promised an Acer laptop worth £350 as an incentive. Those who fail will not be allowed to sell laptops in a customer-facing role. The company found that while staff members who owned mobiles were able to draw on their own experiences when selling, most sales assistants could not afford a laptop so did not have the knowledge to back up their sales pitch.

“In training we give them real good basic knowledge about the things that make the laptops different form each other, why people might want a particular model, what needs it might solve, which ones have parental control, which don’t, and so on,” said Andrew Harrison, Chief Executive of Carphone UK.

The training programme comes as the retailer seeks to expand its customer base beyond its traditional mobile phone market, in order to protect itself against potential negative consequences of the current downturn in the economy. Mr Harrison said that more and more people require laptops to gain access to popular social networking sites.

“Prices of laptops are coming down, people want to do instant messaging and Facebook and most of them want to do it on a laptop,” he said. “We are about to go through same growth curve in laptops as we did in mobiles and if we are to enter this market we have to knowledgeable, credible staff and that means a huge investment in our people and training so they can give customers advice about which product is best for their needs.”

As part of its Wireless World proposition, launched last month, the company is stocking six laptops within each of its 809 UK stores. Brands stocked include from Acer, Fujitsu Siemens, Toshiba and EPC, and start from free to £249 if purchased with a mobile broadband contract from Carphone’s own brands TalkTalk and AOL, as well as Orange, T-Mobile and 3. Last year Carphone offered a free Dell laptop to new AOL subscribers.

NatWest Students get discount on mobile broadband

As an incentive to attract youngsters to its student bank account, Natwest is handing out £50 vouchers redeemable towards 3 mobile broadband service.

This comes as part of a promotional package which includes an interest-free overdraft as well as reductions on rail fares and £100 off a new Asus laptop. New customers will also be able to receive a Microsoft LifeCam if they sign-up for an account before 31^st October of this year.

Mark Worthington, who heads up NatWest’s student and graduate banking, said that the deal had “evolved in response to what students have told us really matters to them.”

49 Million European Laptops to have Mobile Broadband by 2013

Analyst firm Berg Insight recently published a report which estimated that the number of laptops with mobile broadband connectivity in Europe will increase from the 8.4 million recorded last year to 49 million in 2013, an increase of 34.1% year-on-year.

PC notebooks will have pre-installed mobile broadband technology for use away from the home in addition to a fixed connection. Once the majority of laptops intended for the European market have embedded HSPA/LTE chipsets as standard in the coming three to five years, users will be able to directly insert a SIM card into their laptops for mobile broadband freedom. Having said that, we’re pretty much already there technologically speaking; the plug ‘n’ play Dongles, available from the likes of Orange, T-Mobile and 3 are essentially SIM cards and a USB attachment encased in aesthetically pleasing plastic jackets.

The explosion in mobile broadband technology is likely to put a strain on mobile operators. In terms of volume of data, mobile data traffic already exceeds that of mobile voice traffic.

According to Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst at Berg Insight, serious network investments are needed if mobile operators are to keep up with demand from consumers: “On the one hand [mobile operators] have a highly attractive proposition – a novel mobile service with high ARPU [average revenue per user]. On the other hand, the very popularity of the service stretches the mobile network infrastructure to its utmost limit – threatening to degrade the level of service for all subscribers.”

Vodafone famously shelled out millions to invest in high-speed mobile broadband access, and are now reaping the benefits, currently able to boast the fastest speeds going.

Free mobile broadband by 2009

Mobile broadband could become free to use as early as 2009, according to broadband comparison site Top 10 Broadband. In a bid to out-do competition, mobile providers have cut broadband charges dramatically over the last year, to the extent that further price-cuts could render the service free-of-charge anyhow.

According to Jessica McArdle of Top 10 Broadband, “With competition reaching its zenith, it is only a matter of time before mobile broadband modems – dongles – are offered free with mobile phone packages in the same way as ISPs such as TalkTalk offer ‘free’ home broadband with home phone deals”.

At the moment around one in ten people use mobile broadband to get online. However, with faster and more powerful handsets, as well as cheaper monthly price plans, broadband on-the-go is becoming a practical and viable alternative to a fixed connection. Huge price-drops in the mobile broadband market over the past year mean that consumers no longer consider it the luxury they used to. For example, at just £16 a month, Vodafone’s mobile broadband service is 65% cheaper and four times faster that its £45 deal of 2006. Top 10 Broadband lists 3, T-Mobile and Orange as other key providers offering mobile broadband packages which start at £10-£15.

Unsurprisingly, the drive for mobile broadband is coming from younger consumers. A recent study conducted by Sony Ericsson in over 30 countries concluded that 15-24 year olds increasingly expect the same service they experience on the internet to transfer to their mobiles.

“The youth are setting the scene,” said Vishnu Singh, regional manager for the Ericsson Consumer Lab in Southeast Asia. “[They] are now expecting mobile broadband services to be as rich as the Internet”.

Carphone hook up Virgin Media and Orange for laptop floggage

Carphone Warehouse are poised to cash in on the rising popularity of mobile broadband services today with the launch of their new free laptop deals. In addition to the same AOLFree Laptop deal currently doing the rounds on this very site, as of today, punters visiting selected Carphone Warehouse stores will be able to sign on the dotted line to qualify for one of six models of free laptops, provided that they also opt in to a broadband package.

Carphone will be setting up separate sections in its high-street stores for The Broadband Shop, an area dedicated to selling mobile broadband services from T-Mobile, Orange, 3, and fixed line from Virgin Media, TalkTalk and AOL Broadband, much like the Virgin Mobile sections set up in certain Zavvi (née Virgin Megastore) outlets. The deal with Virgin will see Carphone being able to flog all four of the Virgin Media services in their own stores; that’s broadband, digital TV, fixed-line and mobile phone services.

Neil Berkett, action chief executive ay Virgin Media said: “By extending our product portfolio in-store and making it simple and easy for customers to sign up, we’re hoping Virgin Media will be at the top of shopping lists.” This mutually beneficial arrangement gives the second and third ranked broadband providers the opportunity to close the gap on market leaders BT.

Carphone head honcho Charles Dunstone believes that the free laptop offer will pay off, especially with younger surfers who want the freedom of mobile broadband: “Our research has shown that for people over 14, having a laptop is becoming more important than having a mobile phone,” says Mr Dunstone. “And they don’t want to wrestle with their siblings and their parents to look at websites like Facebook or YouTube.”

Carphone Warehouse’s new business and multi-channel director Andy Brem said that launch “this is only the start. We are doing with laptops and broadband what we did with mobile phones”.