Orange has become the latest ISP to offer a free laptop with its mobile broadband package.
As of Saturday, customers who sign up to the Internet Everywhere mobile broadband package from Orange will be able to claim a free Asus EEE laptop 900 16GB – a crossover between the hugely popular 900 and 901 netbooks - which has a compact 8.9″ screen, 16GB of solid-state storage and weighs less than 1kg.
However, the “free” laptop comes with so many strings attached that you may prefer to wait till you can afford to buy one outright. The Orange deal commits you to paying £25 a month for two years, giving you 3GB of data each month, 300 texts on the EEE and a free 3G HSDPA modem. This is £10 a month more than their standalone package, and the contract lasts 6 months longer. That means you’re paying a total of £600 over the two years. A hefty sum considering the Asus Eee laptops start from only £179.99 in shops.
The figures may add up if you are considering opting for Orange Broadband anyway. However, for 3G internet on the move, the iPhone may well be a better investment.
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.”
Orange are understood to be ready to launch their long-awaited IPTV (TV via broadband) service, after having taken its trials for its digital TV service to the whole country. Launch was supposed to be something in ‘late 2007′, which obviously didn’t happen, and the launch was moved back to an indeterminate time – trials are apparently still ongoing, but it is understood that the service will be ready to launch very soon.
At the time, Orange said that: “The first phase - our trial to existing paying broadband customers - started in November. Around 300 customers in Leeds and London are currently providing us with essential feedback. Once we’ve reviewed and assessed this feedback, we’ll then continue to roll out to other major towns and cities in the New Year.”
Orange has managed to secure a deal with MGM which will allow them to supply movies on demand to France, Spain and Poland as well as the UK. Orange will also be rolling with Rewind TV, a catch up service which allows you to watch the last months’ worth of programmes on demand - check out the clip uploaded to YouTube.
This could really help Orange’s IPTV offering stand out from the crowd, as the Virgin Media and BT Vision catch up services by contrast allow you to watch the last week’s worth of programmes. By effectively quadrupling the amount of TV you can watch, Orange have already increased the added value of their digital TV service four fold. We said last December that 2008 was set to be the year of IPTV. This could be interesting…
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.
The six biggest ISPs in the UK have struck a deal with the government and the BPI to clamp down on illegal filesharing. The ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, or MoU, comes ahead of an announcement to be issued by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform later today, threatening ISPs with prosecution if they fail to tackle unlawful downloading of music and videos.
“We have looked to ISPs to acknowledge their responsibility to help deal with illegal file-sharing, engage in communicating the issue to their customers, and put in place procedures necessary to effectively tackle repeated unlawful file-sharing,” said a spokesperson for the BPI, the body that represents the British recorded music business.
Unsurprisingly, the list includes both BT and Virgin Media who have both already threatened to get medieval on errant customers. The four other signatories include Orange, Tiscali and Sky and the Carphone Warehouse - we were surprised to see that Charles Dunstone’s group had signed up, given that they had in the past told the BPI where to shove it with regard to adopting a three-strikes rule.
The new agreement sees ISPs adopting universal measures to deal with repeat offenders as well as a plan to commit to the development of more legal music download sites. The deal will involve providers sending warning letters to thousands of illegal downloaders telling them that their activities are being monitored and that they could face prosecution if they continue to flout the law. The crackdown is being hailed by the government as the “world’s first solution” agreed by the industry to tackle illegal file-sharing; it is estimated that last year alone around 6.5 million people in Britain downloaded files illegally.
Parents who receive the letters will be in for a shock, since many are unaware that their children have been downloading music, films and TV programmes illegally. They could be blacklisted and have their internet use curbed under the new plans. Households that ignore the warning letters could have their download speeds massively reduced, making it harder and more time-consuming to download large files, or even be blocked from using the internet altogether.
Concerns raised by this ruling include the prospect of subscribers having their wireless connections hacked and used by someone else for illegal downloads - under current proposals, this could see customers who are victims of pharming being held accountable for the illegal actions of others.
Orange are yet again to give away laptops for free, to users who sign up for their mobile broadband services for 24 months.
Customers who subscribe to a 24-month contract through Orange’s high-street shops or by phone will receive a free Asus Eee PC 900 16G (pictured) worth around £235, as well as a USB modem on Orange’s £25-per-month tariff called ‘Internet Everywhere.’ 100 free texts are included in the plan, as well as 3GB data usage.
An HP 6730s Intel Celeron laptop is available on the £35-a-month contract, and customers on the £40-a-month tariff will receive an HP 6730s Intel Core 2 Duo with an Orange USB dongle. Customers on the £45-per-month tariff will also receive an HP 6730s Intel Core 2 Duo with embedded SIM card. Hewlett-Packard will provide a choice of three laptops for businesses, which come with a 500 minute Wi-Fi allowance and a 5GB data policy.
Orange UK devices director François Mahieu said the operator plans to increase the number of laptops on offer in the future and bundle in fixed-line broadband on some packages: “Over time, we will be looking to expand our offering even further, with more suppliers who are at the forefront of laptop technology, making it even easier for our customers to connect to the internet seamlessly, whether it is for work or play.”
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.
“I am who I am because of everyone,” proclaims the opening line of the new Orange promotional run. This sentiment is at the heart of the company’s largest ever globally coordinated rebrand to be launched across Orange’s worldwide markets, starting on the 5th July 2008 here in the UK.
The catchphrase “I Am Everyone,” is set to replace the traditional “The Future’s Bright” slogan. The idea of this is that in today’s increasingly online world, traditional communication barriers are breaking down and this changes the way that people interact with each other. It’s also meant to represent the changes that the Orange group have made, starting out as a mobile network provider, before branching out into broadband and fixed line calls and digital TV.
The campaign is set to launch this Saturday, with the 60-second “I Am Everyman” TV ad, a voiceover and a single camera shot that pans around the experiences of the everyman narrator, specifically experience with those important people with whom he has made connections with in his life, from best mates to teachers to girlfriends.
O2 has come out top in a new study looking at broadband speeds in the UK. O2’s broadband service provides download speeds over 50% faster than its competitors in the UK. The website moneysupermarket.com found that its 8Mbps service gave an actual average speed of 5.39 Mbps. Runners up for the 8Mbps prize were Sky achieving an average of 3.59 Mbps, and TalkTalk an average 2.99 Mbps. O2 also leads the industry in terms of 16 Mbps and 20 Mbps packages, with an average speed of 8.15 Mbps. The average broadband speed in UK is 2.97Mbps.
Over 20,000 speed tests were carries out as part of the survey. The tests revealed that ISPs were reducing download speeds during peak times. However BT, O2 and Orange managed to keep up their speeds during peak hours while other providers struggled with capacity.
The top three providers all offer broadband as an add-on to existing packages – satellite for Sky, a landline service for TalkTalk, and O2’s mobile service. All three have sidestepped BT’s wholesaler service meaning fewer overheads and more control over speeds. The study showed that for best value, customers should opt for 2Mbps packages, where actual speed is 2.11Mbps for an average price of £10 a month. Packages offering least value for money are those with maximum download speeds of 16Mbps, where an average speed of just 7.02 Mbps typically costs £18.60 a month.
Well, it’s the first of July – pinch, punch, etc – and Tiscali were supposed to announce that they had found someone to take over their European broadband operations… Problem is, they’re still undecided on the sale of their business.
First of all, the offer made by the Carphone Warehouse was rejected outright by Tiscali, and then it looked as though Vodafone were going to step into the broadband market, which would have put them ahead of mobile rivals O2 and Orange by a considerable amount – then this deal was scuppered at the last minute, with no indication from either party as to why, or indeed what the future for Tiscali and it’s millions of UK subscribers was likely to be.
Tiscali had stated that they would have made an announcement by the end of June – it’s now July, and so far, nessuna risposta.
Orange has become the latest ISP to offer a free laptop with its mobile broadband package.
Traditional ISPs are having to fight harder than ever to retain their customers as more and more of us are switching to mobile broadband.
Well, it’s the first of July – pinch, punch, etc – and