Virgin Media goes mobile
Virgin Media, the country’s second largest fixed line broadband operator, launched a mobile broadband service last week.
For £15 per month on an 18 month contract, subscribers get a free USB modem to plug in to their laptop and up to 3Gb of downloads per month – each extra Gb of data cost £15. The company claims the service will offer speeds of up to 3.8Mbps, depending on the strength of 3G signal. It has produced an online data usage calculator but, as a guide, suggests its monthly allowance is enough for 2000 text messages, 100 hours of web surfing, 200 music downloads and 100 downloads of two minute long videos.
There is also an offer of the first three months of mobile broadband being provided free for those on, or taking up, Virgin Media’s XL (20Mbps) package. Thereafter the £15 monthly fee will be added to the £29 per month for the XL package, totalling £44.
Virgin Mobile piggybacks on the T-Mobile network but says it has no immediate plans to bundle its mobile broadband service with smart phones or personal organisers. To date Virgin Mobile has steered mainly towards consumer mobile phones, aimed at voice and multimedia texting, rather than the more sophisticated smart phones, such as the Nokia N series, which are mainly aimed at business users.
Conversely, BT, the country’s largest broadband provider, offers a mobile broadband package for £5 per month (on top of a subscriber’s normal tariff) not through a laptop USB modem but rather through two smart phones developed by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC.
Such differing approaches to the market and a plethora of new handsets means it is going to be an exciting autumn for mobile broadband in the run up to Christmas.
Over the next month to six weeks Blackberry, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Google will launch their answers to the iPhone which will greatly boost choice for both consumer and business users and give retailers several models to consider offering deals on and possibly including as extensions to fixed line connections.
Arguably the most highly anticipated of these new models will be Google’s G1 phone which is expected to launch as an exclusive on T-Mobile next month as a direct rival to O2’s exclusive deal for the iPhone.
Against this background, the country’s second largest broadband provider today launching its first mobile broadband service signals that the sector is now entering its most exciting quarter yet as operators and manufacturers prepare for Christmas.
Tags: mobile, Virgin Media
