broaband icon

Home v mobile broadband

As mobile broadband sales soar, a new focus on this high growth, increasingly competitive broadband market has emerged; the central query regards the potential for home and mobile broadband to co-exist and the future viability of home broadband.

At present: Home broadband excels in the following areas:

  • Price: packages start at £4.50 a month compared to £10 on mobile broadband.
  • Bundle options: opportunity to bundle up to 4 utilities together for just £40 a month.
  • Download allowance: 40GB and unlimited download packages available.
  • Speeds: up to 20GB download speeds (in some areas).

Compare home broadband packages here.

While mobile broadband has the edge on the following factors:

  • Flexibility: mobile modems are completely portable and can be used anywhere there is mobile phone coverage (in the UK and abroad).
  • No land line needed: as mobile broadband runs over mobile phone networks there’s no need to pay £129 installation and £11 a month on top of your broadband anymore.
  • Simple operation system: just plug in your mobile broadband dongle, USB stick or express data card and connect to the internet. No wires, no routers and no worries.
  • Easy to buy and switch provider, no need for MAC codes.

Compare the latest mobile broadband packages here.

It is clear that home broadband still has an edge over mobile broadband in a number of key areas such as speed, cost and download allowance, but as mobile broadband grows and becomes ubiquitous it is likely that improvements in these areas will occur.

In terms of the future struggle for broadband dominance, we at Top 10 Broadband think that mobile broadband has greater long-term potential and it will overtake home broadband sales by 2010, a prediction that we revealed in a recent press release.

That is not to say that home broadband will become entirely defunct, but rather an also-ran in the grand scheme of broadband usage while mobile broadband will come to prominence.

Still not sure which to choose? Maybe you won't have to, as T-Mobile are offering free access to over 1,200 WiFi HotSpots across the UK with their mobile broadband packages there's no better time to be wireless be it via mobile or wireless broadband.

For more information on this area, see our mobile broadband and WiFi hotspots page.

Mobile Broadband: Compare the latest deals here.