Broadband Genie warns on mobile broadband prices

February 24, 2017

Mobile broadband is becoming more and more popular, which is not surprising as it allows customers to connect to the Internet wherever they are, without having to worry about the cost of a landline.

There are plenty of cheap mobile broadband deals around to attract customers.

For example, an 18 month contact with T Mobile offers a super fast dongle, with a 3GB data allowance, for just £7.50 a month.

Compare this with a connection charge of around £120 for a landline, and mobile broadband looks pretty attractive.

However broadband comparison website Broadband Genie has highlighted two new reports, by Omnitele and Strand Consult, which both suggest that mobile broadband providers will soon want to capitalise on the cost of rolling out their services, and look set to introduce new pricing structures.

One way that service providers could boost profits is by raising prices for heavy users, and controlling their data traffic at busy times.

This would allow them to offer cheaper deals to attract more casual users. Other changes to business models are also expected.

John Strand, the CEO of Strand Consult said:

“we expect mobile broadband operators will launch mobile broadband products which cannot be used with VoIP [internet telephony] and P2P [peer-to-peer file downloading] services. However, the connection will be cheap and far below what we pay for home broadband”.

Prices are expected to start changing in the UK by early 2018.