O2 Broadband has just announced yet another sizzling summer deal. All those who sign up for any of the O2 Home Broadband packages throughout July will get the first two months of their broadband service free. This provides a saving of up to £44 over the first year of service, should you sign up for the O2 Broadband Pro package and you are not an O2 Mobile customer.

This offer is also available to customers outside the O2 network, who can sign up for O2 Access Broadband, which provides the same speed and usage cap as O2 Standard Broadband (up to 8Mbps, Unlimited) for a slightly increased monthly cost.

It’s been a busy few weeks for O2, who on Monday announced a Wi-Fi tie-in with BT Broadband which sees O2 Mobile Broadband customers able to make use of 3,000 BT Openzone Wi-Fi points. In the week previous, O2 halved the cost of Mobile Broadband dongles on Pay As You Go.

O2 has just slashed the connection cost of its Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband service in half. The USB Modem E160 dongle, normally priced £29.34 is now available for £14.97 until Monday the 29th of June. The mobile broadband dongle works with both PCs and Macs, offers plug and play installation and top connection speeds of 3.6Mbps.

As well as this, O2 Mobile Broadband customers on this PAYG offering can take advantage of different daily, weekly and monthly tariffs. The daily tariff comes with a data allowance of 500MB, and unlimited Wi-Fi access at any of the 5,000 UK hotspots operated by The Cloud.

The weekly offering provides 1GB for £7.50, with the monthly offering providing 3GB for £15. Again, both of these offerings provide unlimited Cloud Wi-Fi access.

Ever had problems with mobile phone signal at home? Well now thanks to Vodafone and a little thing they call the Vodafone Access Gateway (pictured), you can set up a miniature mobile phone network in your own home using your broadband connection.

Much in the same was as you’d set up a wireless network in the home for multiple computers and laptops to connect to, Vodafone Access Gateway plugs directly into your broadband line and wirelessly routes all voice calls, texts and data requests across your connection.

Seeing as voice calls and texts aren’t hugely data intensive compared to say streaming music and video online, this shouldn’t have a huge impact on your monthly usage. This is great news for those who live in areas where mobile coverage is patchy at the best of times, and can’t always get through to friends and family on their mobiles.

The Vodafone Access Gateway will be available to order in store and online from the 1st of July. The Gateway will be available on Vodafone price plans from as little as £15 a month, or for a one off fee of £160. No news as of yet if the Gateway will be available at a discounted price when bought with Vodafone mobile broadband; we’d assume that some sort of deal along those lines would be available in the future.

BT has launched what it claims is the cheapest home and mobile broadband package around, starting at just £15.95 a month. BT Total Broadband customers can now get up to 8Mbps wireless broadband at home as well as 1GB monthly mobile broadband for as little as £308.08 over 18 months.

Customers can enjoy speeds of up to 7.2Mbps on the go through the USB modem which works over the 3G network. Simply plug the USB modem into a laptop and be online in a matter of minutes.

The USB modem itself costs £9.99 for customers on BT’s Option 3 package, and £49.99 for customers who subscribe to Options 1 and 2. Customers receive the dongle itself, plus 1GB usage allowance a month when signing up to an 18 month contract. This offer is available in conjunction with the current 3 months free offer and is only available online.

You want some complimentary Wi-Fi to go with your iPhone and vanilla low carb mocha? Well thanks to O2 and BT Broadband you can.

Further to the announcement that all Starbucks outlets across the UK and Ireland are to be fully furnished with Wi-Fi networks courtesy of BT Openzone comes the news that iPhone owners and O2 Mobile Broadband customers will also be able to surf for free whilst slurping a skinny latte.

As of now, iPhone owners can hop on to the internet using a Starbucks/BT Openzone connection for free, whilst O2 Mobile Broadband customers will be able to surf gratis from a yet to be specified date in the summer - more on this as and when we hear it.

Until then, O2 Mobile Broadband customers can sign up for access to BT Openzone hot spots for £7.34 a month.

The good news for iPhone owners is that you can now sit and sip with your iPhone and get back to that novel you’ve been working on, after installing the ‘WriteBook’ app…

BT has revealed the first areas in the UK to receive its next-gen services. The broadband market leader will deploy its first fibre connections in the suburbs of Muswell Hill in north London and Whitchurch in northern Cardiff this summer.

These regions will form part of a trial before full scale roll out of the £1.5 billion network begins early next year. Average download speeds available are said to be around the 40Mbps mark, with 60Mbps being earmarked as the theoretical ‘up to’ speed.

Steve Robertson, chief executive officer of BT Openreach, said that next-gen broadband is “essential to the future of the UK”.

“The wider industry will now be able to plan ahead as we will be making our services available on a wholesale basis. This approach will benefit customers as there will undoubtedly be fierce competition for their business.”

It was announced last month that BT would also be trialling its next-gen services in rural areas in order to collect a wealth of data. Areas provisionally earmarked for this included the Calder Valley near Halifax and Taffs Well in South Wales, although no further information about deployment in theses areas has been announced.

The Samsung NC10 Mini-Laptop has been voted best mini laptop on the market in a review on Channel 5’s Gadget Show. The notebook is currently available free on the 3GB and 10GB 24 Month O2 Mobile Broadband contracts.

During the show, ITV newsreader Julie Etchingham tested three mini laptops - the Acer Eee PC 1000H, Acer Aspire One D150, and the Samsung NC10 - in the hope of finding one that she could use on the move. Though all three laptops were highly portable, the Samsung won Julie’s vote of confidence due to its larger 10.2″ display, easy to operate track pad and well-spaced keyboard. The screen also responded well to various light conditions, including harsh sunlight.

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O2 have got in on the mobile broadband laptop act. O2 are giving away a Samsung NC10 Mini-Laptop FREE to any customer who signs up for O2 Mobile Broadband for 24 months.

The Samsung NC10 - worth around £300 - comes with Windows XP, McAfee Virus Scan, and a 160GB hard drive. A lightweight neoprene slipcase (pictured) which is black with a blue edging, echoing the O2 Mobile Broadband colour scheme, is also included.

The Samsung NC10 is available free to those who sign up for either the 3GB or 10GB 24 Month plan, for £29.38 and £39.15 a month respectively. The cost of the O2 E169 USB Modem is included in the contract.

Vodafone and O2 have agreed on a deal which will see the two mobile operators merging their mobile networks, in order to improve mobile phone reception across the country, and, more importantly, improve the availability and quality of mobile broadband services.

Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 owners Telefonica Europe said: “This goes some way to ‘future proofing’ the network,” adding that “the current economic situation was a catalyst.”

The merging of the networks will see the operators saving hundreds of millions of pounds over the next few years, and could, in theory, lead to the eventual rollout of mobile broadband services comparable to fixed-line connections in terms of speed and reliability, in accordance with Lord Carter’s Digital Britain proposals.

This follows in the footsteps of a deal done in December 2007 between 3 and T-Mobile. The two operators share HSDPA networks and are starting to decommission masts, with T-Mobile already noticing savings, costs, freeing up money that can be invested.

In Spain, a joint venture between Vodafone and Orange saw the two providers able to bring much faster services to rural areas, by reducing the number of base stations needed, thereby reducing the cost of running and maintenance.

Virgin Media came out on top in a recent survey on mobile broadband products by independent consumer group Which? who tested each of the provider’s products to see if the much advertised plug and play aspect of mobile broadband set up really was as easy as that.

Providers were tested on usability, customer service, ease of set up, speed and connection, and how easy it was to cancel.

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