Broadband

O2 has kicked off a mobile broadband promotions war which will dominate broadband deals this summer and early autumn.

Until the end of October customers taking out its mobile broadband product for £20 per month will now get free home broadband for a year as long as they live with the O2 Home Broadband Network, which it claims currently covers 60% of the population. Those living beyond the reach of exchanges where O2 has installed equipment to take control of the entire line (called local loop unbundling) can chose to have £7.50 per month taken off their home broadband bill for the first year.

The mobile package offers unlimited Wi-Fi and mobile downloads speeds of up to 3.6mbps, dependent on location, with a monthly3Gb download allowance. The deal is open to existing O2 subscribers, as well as newcomers, and relies on a two year contract being signed.

The mobile broadband move will be followed tomorrow by Orange which is offering mobile broadband subscribers a laptop within its Internet Everywhere tariff. Consumers paying £25 per month will get an Eee latop and dongle which gives 3Gb of downloads and 100 texts from the computer.

Business users can chose more powerful HP laptops for £35, £40 and £45 per month, with the latter notebook featuring an integrated Orange Sim card rather than a dongle. The business packages come with the addition of 500 minutes of Wi-Fi use per month.

AOL has been offering free laptop with its home wireless broadband connections for several months but the O2 move is causing a stir because it includes the speed of a fixed line service (up to 8mbps) at home with the convenience of a dongle for mobile broadband outside the home on an included laptop.

There are other mobile deals available which feature an included laptop from T-Mobile and 3 but, for their monthly tariffs of £30 and £35, they do not offer a fixed line deal.

This places O2 in direct competition with BT which unveiled its BT Anywhere package in May. BT Total Broadband Option 3 subscribers can opt to pay £30 a month (£5 on top of the normal package) to receive a smart phone which can pick up email and surf the web on GPRS (not 3G) and Wi-Fi.

Although it is £10 a month more expensive, it does include a smart phone and a download allowance of 10GB as well as inclusive call minutes. O2 customers will need to supply their own laptop to plug their dongle in to, do not get cellular call minutes included and are offered a less generous data download limit of 3Gb per month.

BT told SamKnows that it believes there is no need for it to respond to O2’s move as it is “already competitive”.

The O2 home and mobile deal not only competes directly with BT, but added to tomorrow’s Orange Internet Everywhere move (and existing T-Mobile and 3 mobile broadband deals with included laptops) means broadband users have never had a better array of offers to choose from.

Which package suits will depend on whether the subscriber requires fixed line speeds at home (which would favour BT and O2) or is happy to use a dongle in the home and is more interested in receiving a free laptop (which would favour Orange’s latest move and probably also prompt consideration of T-Mobile £30 per month and 3’s £35 per month inclusive summer deals).

Tags: 3, AOL, BT, HP, Mobile Broadband, O2, Orange, T-Mobile