Mobile Broadband

From the 1st of March onwards O2 mobile phone and mobile broadband customers can earn £50 if they sign up for O2 Home Broadband. Punters who opt for either the Premium or Pro packages, both of which provide top speeds of 20Mbps, will see £50 credit tacked onto their mobile bills.

This offer applies to mobile phone and mobile broadband subscribers on pay monthly and pay as you go. This could pay for five months of mobile broadband if you’re on the 18 month 1GB plan, or two months on the least expensive 24 month iPhone 3GS tariff.

If customers are not already with O2 mobile they can still take advantage of the offer and simply buy a mobile product within 30 days of purchasing O2 Premium or Pro Broadband. This also applies to the SIM-Onle (pay as you go) tariffs.

O2 mobile customers can sign up for O2 Premium costs £10 a month, or O2 Pro for £17.50. Premium and Pro both provide speeds of up to 20Mbps and unlimited downloads. The only difference is that the Pro package allows for faster upload speeds - up to 2.5 Mbps compared to the 1.3Mbps maximum upload of Premium.

O2 is celebrating after achieving poll position in an independent study by SIRODA, which shows the blue broadband and mobile network offering the fastest mobile broadband speeds in the country.

SIRODA completed a comprehensive survey of all 5 mobile broadband providers in the UK over a 60 day period, measuring each connection speed at peak periods throughout the day.

O2 proved to be over 30% quicker than the slowest mobile broadband provider for web page access during tests in January 2010 and on average had the fastest download rate in 12 of the 20 UK key cities tested.

O2 mobile broadband prices start at just £2 per day (500MB, Unlimited Wi-Fi). Click here for more info.

T-Mobile and Orange have been making puppy dog eyes at each other for ages now so it should come as no surprise to anyone that it was announced today that the two mobile networks are to officially merge. A big engagement party with streamers and delicious cake and everything was thrown in honour of the union (note: we made this bit up).

According to the Times Online, the merger has now been approved by the European Commission and will see rival mobile network 3 doing rather well out of the bargain as well.

The union of T-Mobile and Orange in the UK would have seen the super-networks’ customer base swell to some 30 million customers, which would leapfrog current market leader O2 and potentially stifle competition in the market. In order to allay regulatory fears, the UK’s smallest network 3 will be able to access 3,000 more T-Mobile masts, giving it greater 3G coverage.

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Orange is still the best provider in the fruit basket when it comes to mobile broadband, according to YouGov. The recent survey shows that Orange still offers the best value for money when compared to the rest. The YouGov Dongle Tracker survey put Orange’s mobile broadband packages at the top spot in terms of ‘upload speeds’, ‘reliability’ and ‘customer services’.

Orange Mobile Broadband also topped the same YouGov Dongle Tracker survey which was published last November. That time round, Orange won the top spot for ‘overall quality’ and ‘value for money.

Asif Aziz, Director of Broadband and Home, Orange UK said: “Retaining our position as the top mobile broadband provider in the UK is a great accomplishment which we’re really proud of.”

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The Mobile Broadband January Sale has begun. As well as vying each other for the most iPhone sales, O2 and Orange are now cutting the costs of their respective mobile broadband packages.

O2 is currently offering its 3GB Mobile Broadband package on 24 month contracts for just £10 per month for the first 4 months (£15 thereafter). The USB dongle comes included free of charge and the contract comes with unlimited Wi-Fi use.

O2’s Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband offering has also taken a price tumble. The USB dongle originally cost £30 (OK, £29.99) which has now been cut down to £20. Customers then pay either £2 per day for a 0.5GB (500MB) usage allowance, £7.50 for 7 days with 1GB or £15 for 30 days of 3GB. There is no contract or long-term commitment. As with the 3GB pay montly option, unlimited Wi-Fi is also included.

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A lot has happened in the UK broadband market in 2009. Here’s a quick round up of the some of the big changes in broadband that have taken place over the last 12 months.

Tiscali gets bought by TalkTalk

Poor old Tiscali spent 2008 looking for a buyer without success and its woes continued into 2009. Despite many ISPs sniffing around hoping to steal a quick march on BT, nobody was willing to dig deep in their wallets. With deals collapsing at the last minute and its parent company losing millions of Euros on the continent times looked bleak for Tiscali’s UK arm. Then TalkTalk came to the rescue at the eleventh hour and swept Tiscali of it’s feet.

Speeding Up

2009 has seen a lot of speeding. BT, Orange and PlusNet all revved up their top download speeds to 20Mbps and 24Mbps in the case of Eclipse Internet. BT also released the Broadband Accelerator speed booster pack allowing customers to benefit from a more reliable broadband experience.

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Come next-gen broadband and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for dial-up now. As well as Jimmy Carr, the Wernham Hogg Paper Company and that John Betjeman poem, Slough can now count high speed mobile broadband among Things It’s Famous For.

O2, whose UK headquarters are  in the Berkshire town, has distributed next-gen LTE dongles to test out their new high speed mobile network. LTE, short for Long Term Evolution technology, is looking set to replace 3G as the next high speed mobile broadband technology.

A piece in today’s Telegraph states that the LTE dongles given out in the O2 trial are theoretically capable of providing top speeds of 150Mbps.

This could mean that super-fast speeds could be rolled out without the need for the expensive and time consuming installation of a nationwide fibre network.

Part of the Digital Britain report mentioned that future solutions for Broadband Britain (2Mbps speeds in every home by 2012) would involve a mixture of traditional physical connections (phone lines and cable) and wireless solutions.

LTE ought to allow for all sorts of mobile broadband goodness such as seamless streaming of HD videos, downloads of huge playlists, online mobile gaming… everything that a fast fixed-line connection ought to allow for.

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Orange Mobile Broadband is the pick of the bunch in the UK, according to a recent report.

Research company YouGov rated Orange’s Mobile Broadband packages the best in terms of ‘overall quality’ and ‘value for money’ in their recent Dongle Tracker survey.

In addition it was also rated highly in nine out of 15 categories, including ease of use and overall network coverage.

These results are yet another feather in Orange’s cap. Orange has recently acquired carriage rights for the Apple iPhone, breaking rival broadband provider and mobile network operator O2’s long-held monopoly on the device.

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You want some complimentary Wi-Fi to go with your protein-enriched walnut flake sprinkled grande cappuccino? Starbucks has just announced yet another free Wi-Fi deal which will see even more customers able to sit, sip and surf in the comfy confines of their local ‘bucks branch.

Every registered Starbucks Card holder can claim free BT Openzone Wi-Fi access at any of the 678 coffee houses in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Starbucks Cards can be used to claim other free rewards from the world conquering coffee chain, including extra whipped cream, soy milk, a free coffee on your birthday, as well as free wireless. Eligible Starbucks Card holders can sign up online by pointing their browsers at www.starbucks.co.uk and shelling out £5.

BT first announced its partnership with Starbucks back in April this year.

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Orange and T-Mobile are said to be merging their UK mobile operations which will see the two become the biggest mobile network and mobile broadband provider in the country. The merger will see the companies pooling their resources, meaning that we’ll hopefully see increased coverage, faster mobile broadband speeds and larger amounts of monthly usage.

According to the BBC, the deal is not due to take place until November, after which the two brands will remain separate for 18 months before merging under one banner. We’ll either see the names merging a la ‘Orange T-Mobile’ or one of the two brands being dropped.

If the latter is the case, our money is on Orange being the remaining brand name, due largely to their stronger brand presence. There’s Orange Wednesdays, Orange Rock Corps and of course, Orange Broadband.

Either that, or the new company will go with one of the following names:

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