Customers flock to free laptop deals – but are they worth it?

Mobile broadband packages which come with a ‘free’ laptop are set to become a must-have gift this Christmas, overtaking standalone dongles.

Consumers looking to save money or defer the cost of buying new technology are driving sales of mobile broadband pay monthly deals which include a laptop in the price. Networks and electronics retailers such as 3, Vodafone, Carphone Warehouse and PC World are offering free laptops or netbooks on certain mobile phone contracts usually lasting 18 to 24 months, and retailers have experienced a sharp increase in sales of free laptop deals in recent months, by as much as 23% of overall sales since July.

Mobile retailer Phones4U has reported considerable growth since it launched a ‘free’ laptop deal, predicting that such bundles will prove a popular choice this Christmas.

“Since launching laptop-broadband deals on Phones4u.co.uk, we have seen significant sales growth month-on-month and predict that laptop-broadband deals will be top-sellers this Christmas,” stated a Phones 4U spokesman.

A piece in The Guardian this week suggested that 3 and Vodafone currently offer the best deals on mobile broadband-laptop bundles.

However, though deals including a free laptop may seem like an inexpensive option in the run-up to a credit crunch Christmas, they are likely to cost you far more in the long run than if you bought a standalone dongle and laptop separately. The cost of laptops advertised as being ‘free’ is in fact spread over the length of the contract.

For example, a 24 month deal on Vodafone which comes with a ‘free’ Dell Inspiron Mini 9 ultraportable will set you back £25 a month, costing a total of £600 over the two years. Bought on its own, the Mini 9 will cost you around £300. Of course, you get the data contract as well, but with mobile broadband prices set to come down further in the coming months, you may well regret being tied down to a 2 year contract.

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T-Mobile and 3 join BT for 3G network support

Mobile operators T-Mobile and 3 have signed a five-year agreement with BT to connect 7,500 of their base stations to BT‘s high speed next-generation broadband network.

The deal was struck between BT Wholesale and Mobile Broadband Network Ltd (MBNL), a joint venture between 3 and T-Mobile. Mobile Broadband Network was established to provide 98% of the UK with access to high-speed HSDPA mobile broadband by 2010, thus making it the largest network in the country.

Mobile phone providers are being urged to increase their data transmission speeds as more and more users make wider use of mobile broadband. This need for speed has been highlighted as part of the five-year plan. Rival mobile operator Vodafone already signed a similar deal in April, with O2 following suit last May. Orange is now the only major mobile operator in the UK without such a deal.

As part of the agreement, BT will lighten the load of the network operators by carrying data from their mobile broadband services over the newly planned fibre optic network. This is known as backhaul. The deal will be worth several hundred million pounds – a large and welcome boost to BT’s business arm, which has suffered from a recent drop of revenues as companies such as Carphone Warehouse have stopped using its products.

The technology director at T-Mobile UK, Emin Gurdenli said: “This agreement with BT will make sure backhaul is not a constraint now or in the future at a time when T-Mobile is experiencing strong growth in mobile broadband and other mobile data services.”

The release of the Apple 3G iPhone, Google’s G1 and other smartphones such as the N96 are fuelling the current popularity of mobile broadband. As demand further increases, mobile providers will need to make sure that the networks they control can handle the increased volume of data traffic.

The managing director from BT Wholesale Markets, Brian Fitzpatrick said: “BT now supports the base station connectivity requirements of four of the five mobile players in the UK market, bringing our economies of scale to a hugely important element of the communications marketplace.”

Brown launches watchdog to protect children online

Gordon Brown has launched an internet watchdog to protect children from harmful online content such as violent video games and cyber bullying.

The Prime Minister said that the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which aims to teach children about dangers on the web, target harmful internet content and establish a code of conduct for websites enabling user uploads, was a landmark in online child protection.

Speaking at the Science Museum in London last week, Brown said the internet offered children “a world of entertainment, opportunity and knowledge”. However, it was important to strike a balance between safety and internet freedoms.

“Just as we would not allow [children] to go out unsupervised in playgrounds or in youth clubs or in swimming pools, so we must put in place the measures we need to keep our children safe online,” he said.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, also at the launch, said: “We are determined to do all we can to ensure that the internet environment is safe for children to use.”

The council will be made up of representatives from over 100 organisations including social networking sites such as Facebook, technology firms such as Microsoft and Google, and mobile phone companies such as O2, Orange, T-Mobile and 3. They will come together to form a strategy that aims to establish a public awareness campaign, promote responsible advertising to children online, draw up voluntary codes of practice for websites and establish measures to protect children on the net, such as dismantling illegal sites.

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O2 Broadband MacBook bundle rumour denied

It has been officially announced that rumours about leading UK mobile network and ADSL2+ providers O2 Broadband would bundling Apple MacBook laptops with their home broadband and mobile broadband products are nothing more than that.

An O2 spokeswoman confirmed that there are “no such plans to launch an Apple MacBook laptop offer,” and that the rumours are “untrue”.

Mobile network and broadband rivals Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and 3 Mobile have all done well out of broadband and laptop bundle deals, and it was thought that O2 would want to get in on the action.

It was announced earlier this month that Carphone ISP TalkTalk would be giving away iPod Touches as part of a September prize draw, and as both O2 and the Carphone Warehouse have the exclusive right to sell the Apple iPhone in stores across the UK, and it was thought that O2 would want to work out a similar deal with regard to Apple products.

Internet rumour mongers put two and two together to make five, and, well, you know how these things happen.

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.”

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Sky’s the limit, claim Virgin Media

Here we go again. Virgin Media have called BS on bitter rivals BSkyB over their recent claims with regard to being the first UK ISP to offer punters truly unlimited broadband.

Sky recently removed their fair usage policy from their premier up to 16Mbps Broadband Max service, which means that punters can actually download however much they want, without fear of running into some sort of phantom usage limit and being forced to pay infinity billion pounds in charges; “We believe that we are now the only major broadband provider to offer truly ‘unlimited’ broadband,” crowed the Sky spokesperson at the time.

It was presumably this statement that got Virgin Media’s hackles up. “Virgin Media has always believed that customers should be able to enjoy their broadband as much as they want,” sulked the Virgin official.

“We were the first ISP to provide unlimited broadband packages to our entire customer base, including both cable and ADSL, and have never imposed any form of ‘fair use’ policy.”

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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.

Sky Broadband to launch ‘unlimited’ ad campaign

Sky Broadband is set to issue a challenge to its rivals as it prepares to launch an advertising campaign, claiming to be the only internet service provider to offer truly unlimited broadband to its customers.

This comes after Sky decided to remove its fair usage policy, which limits “excessive” downloading, on its top-tier Sky Broadband Max product. The company added that because it does not cap download speeds at peak times, known as “traffic shaping”, it offers genuinely “unlimited” broadband.

“Customers have told us that they want ‘unlimited’ broadband to be exactly that, so we’ve acted on their feedback,” said a spokesperson for Sky. “We believe that we are now the only major broadband provider to offer truly ‘unlimited’ broadband.”

Sky Broadband will still maintain its “acceptable usage policy”, but this limits the type of content that people can download rather than how much.

Sky Broadband is likely to launch its new campaign towards the end of the month, advertising over TV, newspapers and magazines, the internet and through direct marketing, triggering an expected marketing battle with rival ISPs.

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Carphone rumour reignites interest in Tiscali

Carphone Warehouse has again signalled interest in taking over the home broadband and fixed-line operations of Tiscali in the UK and Italy. The Milanese comms company announced it was looking out for a buyer of its European ops earlier this year, and bidding for the Tiscali broadband tentacles began in April.

At one point, Vodafone, the worlds biggest mobile network, looks set to snap up Tiscali, in a bid to leapfrog its UK mobile rivals Orange and O2, who both have a strong presence in the UK broadband market. However, Vodafone pulled out in June following a falling out over Tiscali’s valuation of its assets.

Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk/AOL) were rumoured to be interested, but after the Vodafone fracas, even they seemed disinterested. Now it appears that a buyout of Tiscali is back on the cards, although this time the offer appears to be just for its British and Italian customers – previously the deal was thought to be for all of Tiscali’s continental concerns.

If such a deal goes ahead, the acquisition would see Carphone Warehouse overtake BT and clinch the top spot in the UK Broadband stakes. A merger of the two would see the total combined consumer base swell to a figure in excess of 4.6million, which would leave BT trailing behind in second place, and the Big 6 becoming a Big 5.

Carphone Warehouse currently serves around 2.8 million UK customers through both TalkTalk and AOL UK. Tiscali, through its own subscriber base and that of Pipex, which it annexed in July 2007, serves a figure just shy of 2 million; 1.84 million after losing 37,000 subscribers last quarter.

In a related story, Tiscali began legal proceedings against BT in July, after it transpired that the market leader, wise to news of a sell-off, played on customers understandable fears by sending out letters to Tiscali subscribers, urging them to switch to a provider that is “complete and is here to stay,” (i.e. BT).

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”.