3G mobile broadband is not new and data cards have been around for a long time, but it has only been in the last year that we have seen mobile broadband packages that can seriously compete with fixed line services. With packages from £10 per month with 1GB included these mobile broadband packages offer a real alternative to fixed line services particularly when there is no additional line rental to pay unlike traditional adsl services.
At the moment the download limits offered by mobile broadband packages a fairly light compared to fixed line services with caps of around 7GB for £25 they are therefore not suitable for heavy users and downloaders , but this should steadily improve as the demand for mobile broadband increases and the networks drive on to expand their share of the broadband market.Some reports suggest that by 2010 fixed line services will be overtaken by mobile service – but only time will tell ,as there is still many unanswered questions about 3g mobile broadband like how will the the networks cope with increased levels of contention on the networks with the increasing amount of data users.
I personally think that with improvements and future speed increases of fixed line broadband services the majority of home and business users will still opt for fixed line services although i am sure mobile broadband will be a close contender.
I have a Three mobile broadband dongle and it is possibly… strike that… DEFINITELY the most unreliable piece of USB equipment I have known to date.
I guess that at £10 a month you pay for what you get, but colleagues of mine have modems from other companies and have none of the problems I do.
Although broadband dongles do offer the freedom of almost-anywhere internet access, I guess you simply cannot beat a decent fibre-optic broadband account!