UK Users Abandon Mobile Broadband

Figures just released suggest that the boom in mobile broadband sales during recent years is over as consumers now realise the technology falls short of the hype and providers like O2 have had to reduce their promises.

UK mobile broadband price comparison site, Broadband Expert, said there has been a 57 percent drop in the number of people it has helped sign up for mobile broadband in the last twelve months. Moreover, it said sales have crashed by over 50 percent year-on-year.

Mobile broadband sales crash

The findings are further supported by Experian Hitwise data, which this week has reported that there has also been a dip of more than 50 percent in the amount of searches undertaken for the phrase ‘mobile broadband’ in the same period.

Rob Webber, Broadband Expert’s commercial director, said that slow speeds and poor coverage have left UK consumers feeling let down by the technology. “Consumers expected all the benefits of a home broadband connection while on the move,” he said.

Webber added that his firm had received a huge amount of feedback from customers complaining of inconsistent or non-existent connections and speeds comparable to dial-up or worse.

But he added that he had high hopes for the impending availability of a superfast Long Term Evolution (LTE) network – or 4G – with speeds over 100Mbps and the affect it will have in restoring mobile broadband customer confidence.

“We’re already seeing companies rolling out LTE networks in the US and Europe,” said Webber, “but the UK is still 12-18 months away from this.”

Rob Bamforth, principal communication, collaboration and convergence analyst at IT researcher, Quocirca told eWEEK Europe he wasn’t surprised to hear that consumers were giving up on mobile broadband.

“I have heard about dongles being returned as ‘broken’ when, in reality, it’s the network connection that’s at fault,” he commented. Others have commented that  dongles are oversold and not even necessary,

Operators must address services

Bamforth agreed with Webber that consumer disillusionment was largely a coverage issue. “But mainly it’s lacking capacity in key areas of concentration at the same time as demand for data services (especially apps) has soared,” he added. “There are stresses in the radio element, the base stations, the backhaul and the core, especially the IP internet protocol] part where, let’s face it, operators have more experience with the demands of voice circuits than packets of potentially really rich media data traffic.”

He also said it may lead to a resurgent reliance on Wi-Fi in enterprises or potentially new priority access-based services. But he was more reticent over the potential affect of 4G to revitalise the market.

“Yes I’m sure 4G/LTE will help,” Bamforth added. “But I remember the way 3G and HSDPA were pitched too. And, while single user, single app streams of bandwidth can be shown to be really high, the reality of these networks – fixed and mobile – is a cacophony of unpredictable users and resource devouring applications.”

Bamforth advised operators to move on from looking at network traffic and packets to try to develop an understanding of mobile internet users’ behaviour. “Then perhaps they can start to predict where they need capacity. There may also be increasingly an argument for prioritisation and streaming of traffic into protected corridors, and even perhaps a return of ‘the mesh,'” he suggested.

Tomorrow, O2 users are planning a protest over the end of the operator’s unlimited bundles