The rapid growth of mobile broadband has got the mobile operators pretty excited. They see an opportunity to infiltrate the huge home broadband market. The early pace was set by the opportunity to connect your laptop to the internet whilst on the move, but I hear mutterings of grander ambitions from some mobile operators.
In order for mobile broadband to truly replace your home connection a few things will need to change. One biggie is that mobile broadband propositions are currently based around a single usb modem. Many, if not most, households that use an internet connection have more than one PC, laptop, Mac, Nintendo Wii or Xbox that require an internet connection. A single USB modem will not enable this. Buying two or three modems means signing up to a couple of contracts, making it a very expensive proposition, removing the only real benefit of going through the hassle.
However this week I found out that it’s possible to get hold of a wi-fi router that uses 3G instead of a normal fixed line (BT or cable) phone line. This would enable more then one person to share a mobile broadband connection. I think Vodafone have offered this as a business proposition for a year or two, allowing temporary offices, such as building site offices, to have some kind of connectivity where a normal phone line may not be available.
So, does this open the floodgates to mobile operators taking on the likes of Tiscali and BT in the home? Not yet. From my experiences, and from feedback I’ve heard elsewhere (including from the store staff of at least one mobile operator) mobile broadband coverage inside a building is still pretty poor. I hear rumours of high return rates as people realise they can’t connect in their home study/bedroom/basement flat etc.
Average download speeds will remain much slower than home broadband for the next couple of years and coverage will remain patchy at best. The download caps and speeds won’t be good enough for applications such as iPlayer or downloading vast amounts of music. And once you stick a 3G SIM into a wi-fi router you lose the great mobility benefit - you can’t pop the SIM out whilst heading away for a weekend and leave the household without internet!
For now 3G based mobile broadband is a great additional service that let’s you connect your laptop whilst out and about. It may be suitable if you don’t need to share your home broadband connection with other people or gadgets, but home broadband still delivers a faster, more reliable internet connection.
Do you agree? Feel free to comment on this article.