Hot-Spot or Mobile Broadband

Huge news in the WiFi Hotspot world today. Starbucks has agreed a deal with BT Openzone that sees them replace T-Mobile as the sole provider of WiFi in 650 Starbucks coffee shops in the UK.

BT Openzone already partners with O2 to provide WiFi access to its customers.  You’ll soon be able to get WiFi access on your iPhone in every Starbucks in the UK and from the summer O2’s mobile broadband customers will also be able to access WiFi whilst sipping a grande caramel skinny latte.

The deal will last 5 years and BT Openzone start installing the service this week with the rollout complete by the end of the summer.

So if you’re currently deciding which mobile broadband with WiFi package to get and you’re a closet Starbucks fan, forget T-Mobile and get O2.

Go to O2.co.uk to see their latest mobile broadband deals

Go to T-Mobile to see their latest mobile broadband deals

…and 1 million in total across Europe.This suggests that 3’s strong marketing campaign and courage to pretty much create a new market in the UK has paid off.  I would estimate that with 500k subscribers they probably hold about 25-35% of the UK’s consumer Mobile Broadband market, out punching their weight in the mobile phone market where they only have around 6 or 7% of customers.

Great to see 3 getting some reward for their efforts and really interesting to get some numbers on the Mobile Broadband market.

3 are widely reported to be rolling out a new range of deals this August which will combine a free laptop with a £30 to £40 per month Mobile Broadband tariff. The contract will last 24 months and include 5GB of downloads per month.

This could be the ultimate student package, or a great way to purchase a second PC for your home whilst getting the benefit of mobile broadband whenever you need, with a generous download limit.

This is similar to Carphone Warehouse’s free laptop offers when you sign up to AOL for your home broadband, a deal which has proved very popular. Keep em peeled for the launch of the deals in a few days time on 3’s website.

New research released by broadband comparison site Broadband Expert suggests that the average download speed of mobile broadband in the UK is 1.46Mbs. Earlier surveys by the same company revealed home broadband services deliver average speeds of 2.95Mbs, so Mobile Broadband is half the current speed of home broadband.

Download speeds should increase over time. One thing that seems to have been glossed over by the survey is that the majority of people who have signed up for mobile broadband are more likely to have the older, cheaper USB modems that run at a maximum download of 1.8Mbps. In my opinion this would skew the results and actually make an average of 1.46Mps pretty bloody good! In another year I would expect the average to rise closer to 2.5Mbps as the newer modems and upgrades to the operators networks kick in. In fact, in a year we may see average home broadband speeds being overtaken by mobile broadband. You heard it here first…

1.46Mps is way ahead of the speeds we all accepted at home 3 years ago and it’s more than fine for browsing the internet, receiving emails and watching shorter video clips. It’s obviously a little slow for downloading large amounts of music and video, but with a relatively low download cap (a maximum of 3GB per month in most cases) you aren’t likely to be using a Mobile Broadband for lots of heavy downloading.

The top download speeds ranged from 2.3Mbps for Vodafone to 1.1Mbps for T-Mobile and 1Mbps for Three. The average upload speed for all providers was 0.38Mbps which is a little on the low side. Upload speed describes how quickly you can send data from your laptop which is important for sending large documents such as emails with photo or Powerpoint attachements.

As you may expect, download speed varied between areas depending on the mobile coverage and the network used, with higher speeds more likely to be achieved in bigger towns and cities. It’s important to note that even in areas of good coverage 3G signals can quickly become weak once deeper inside a building.