Mobile Broadband spurred on by price cuts

Research firm Tariff Consultancy Ltd have forecast continuing high growth in mobile data services such as mobile broadband.

Speakers at the  3rd Mobile Pricing Symposium at Cambridge University, believe new service adoption is being led by Mobile Broadband.  The availability of simple plug-in USB modems/dongles have led to mobile data services becoming a mass market consumer item.

Sales of mobile broadband dongles in the UK have risen fast since late 2007, and number in the thousands per week.

Currently, Mobile Broadband can be had from £10 per month, on monthly contracts, or quite cheap on pay-as-you-go type tariffs.  As competition intensifies, the last few months alone have seen price cuts from 3, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Margrit Sessions of Tariff Consultancy Ltd commented: “Price competition among mobile broadband providers has become intense as the cost of devices has reduced and increased network capacity has become available with HSDPA speeds.

“We believe that flat rate price competition will continue to be severe until mobile providers learn how to differentiate their product offer to meet the need of individual user groups. This is a recurring theme that we look forward to analysing at the 4th Mobile Pricing Symposium in 2009,” she added.