Sunday, March 08, 2009

The boom in mobile broadband | Priming the pipe | The Economist

A key trend – mobile broadband + netbooks + … not-for-profit service providers?…

In Western Europe alone, the number of mobile-broadband users will grow by 50% to 27m this year, according to IDC, an analyst firm. Worldwide, there are thought to be around 100m.

What explains this unexpected boom in such troubled times? Operators have been cutting their prices for data-only connections: in Britain, 3, a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, charges as little as £10 ($14) per month for one gigabyte of data. Prices for dongles are falling, too. Connection speeds are improving as operators upgrade their networks. And then there is the surprising success of netbooks—cheap laptops that are small enough to take everywhere. Operators have even started giving away netbooks with some mobile-broadband contracts.

The boom in mobile broadband | Priming the pipe | The Economist

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