A Quarter Of Households With Mobile Broadband By 2013

The popularity of mobile broadband technology is becoming more apparent as households are starting to turn their backs on traditional fixed line DSL. Analysys Mason, industry observers, has reported that around a quarter of broadband using homes will be connecting to the internet via 3G’s mobile broadband service by 2013, meaning an end to DSL.

The figure rises to half of households when all of European broadband users are taken into account. Mason thinks that this new trend of broadband emerging on top was not foreseen and fixed line operators are going to have to find ways of stopping it if they want to remain in the marketplace in the future.

The report discovered that people are switching to mobile broadband for many reasons and one of them might be cost, with DSL emerging as more costly than its mobile counterpart. Mobile broadband costs have dropped recently and that has given them a competitive rate that outmatches fixed line.

Rupert Wood, the author of the report pointed out how fixed line operators are in the process of underestimating how much of a threat mobile broadband is to them, that DSL “loses out to mobile because it is less flexible and involves substantially higher monthly costs for the end user”, all of this could come about even if current operators put more features into their packages, including higher speeds. As more people use mobile broadband it has been suspected that 3G networks could be overloaded as users meet their capacity.

However it has been shown that DSL users are using as much data as their mobile broadband counterpart, which could mean there would actually be no change in this area. Network capacity will, however, need to be increased. Laptops with mobile broadband will begin to emerge with a special mark to distinguish between those that do not have the software, according to recent reports. This could come as mobile broadband operators themselves offer more pay as you go offers so that light users might become more interested.