Mobile firms offer broadband alternative

CONSUMERS could save themselves hundreds of euro a year by avoiding traditional broadband companies and opting for new services provided by mobile phone firms.

Vodafone, 3 and 02 now offer broadband services through mini-sized mobile modems from €15.99 to €39.99 a month.

Instead of being tied to a traditional Eircom or BT Ireland landline broadband, consumers can use the same mobile modem at home, in the office and outdoors.

They can plug the device into their home PC, their work computer or their laptop and get fast internet access wherever they can get a signal.

The mobile broadband services use mobile technology known as 3G (third generation) so subscribers can surf the internet at high speed, send email with large files and download music.

Vodafone, which launched its service last November, said 30,000 subscribers had signed up in the first half of this year so far.

Spokeswoman Christina Heffernan said: “We have seen particularly strong sales in areas of the country where the provision of fixed-line broadband is not great.”

O2 launched its service in early July and said it was pleased with demand to date. Nobody at 3 was available for comment.

Based on a year’s service a mobile broadband customer will pay between €240 and €480 in subscription fees as well as a one-off cost of €49 to €129 for the modem.

In the first year the total cost with modem and introductory discounts ranges from €384 to €528.

Consumers who instead choose a fixed line broadband from a company such as Eircom can pay between €239 and €580.80 a year in broadband subscription fees, making the cost broadly the same as the mobile offering.

But customers of fixed line firms also have to pay €304.32 a year for telephone line rental on top, meaning the annual total for an Eircom broadband line ranges from €544.20 to €885.12.

The cost can be reduced for consumers signing up to a combined broadband and phone calls package, which range from €612 to €731.88.

Mobile phone companies also say the way their technology work means their broadband can be faster than the speeds offered via phone lines or a dial-up internet connection.

Both 3 and O2 offer broadband at speeds of 3.6 megabits per second (Mbps) while Vodafone is increasing its rate to the same as its rivals from the end of August.

However, speeds are dependent on various factors including location and the number of customers using the service at the same time.

The standard offer from home phone line broadband firms such as Eircom, BT Ireland and UTV Internet is 1Mbps while the fastest is 3Mbps.

Using a 1Mbps home broadband line, a computer user would have to wait 40 seconds to download a typical song from a program like Apple’s iTunes.

But with mobile broadband running at its highest speed, a song can be downloaded in 11 seconds, making mobile services up to three-and-a-half times faster than standard fixed line broadband.

However fixed line deals are often more generous with the amount of data a user can download every month. The limit is up to 30GB with Eircom — enough for about 7,500 songs.

Mobile broadband’s maximum offering is 10GB after which users have to pay up to 49c per MB over, but the monthly capacity is enough for most users to send and receive emails, surf the web and download music.