Samba Mobile Offers Free 3G With Adverts

Samba Mobile is launching a new free 3g mobile broadband service in the UK to users of laptops and iPads, supported by advertising.

The mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) will use Three’s 3G network, with customers only having to cover the cost of the dongle and the SIM card.

Broadband ‘credits’ are then earned by watching advertisements, although these can be supplemented by cash top-ups, which Samba claims are comparable with other operators.

Free 3G (at a price)

“Samba is an exciting new service that gives you free mobile broadband to your laptop, desktop or tablet,” said Samba. “In return, we ask you to watch a few short, high-quality video adverts,”

Laptop and netbook users must purchase a Samba Dongle and SIM for £24.99, while iPad users must buy a micro-SIM for £4.99. The company says it is looking at expanding the service to work with other types of tablet in the future.

Adverts can be viewed either on Samba’s website or through the Samba App for iPad. On average, each advert yields 3.5MB of free data, and it says that most users watch three adverts a day – enough to view 30 average web pages and send 100 emails. Advertisers include the likes of Gilette, McLaren and Unicef, and eventually will be tailored to reflect the user’s tastes.

The Samba Battery can be downloaded, which shows how much credit you have remaining, directly in your browser. Samba currently does not support Internet Explorer, only Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari.

There is no limit to the number of credits that you can earn, but advertisers limit the number of times an advert can be watched by one individual, so intensive users may run out of things to watch. If this happens, 250MB of additional data can be bought for £3.49 and 500MB for £5.99. Free credits do not expire, but cash credits perish after 30 days from the date of purchase.

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