Vodafone slashes mobile internet charges by half
Monday, 18 June 2007
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Vodafone has upped the ante in the burgeoning mobile broadband market by slashing the price it charges to connect to the high-speed internet from a laptop by half.
Over the past year, European mobile phone companies have competed fiercely for high-spending business users who use mobile phone networks to connect wirelessly to the internet. The deployment of the technology HSDPA across mobile phone networks has tripled the capacity for delivering broadband speeds akin to fixed-line services and has enabled companies such as Vodafone and T-Mobile to chase high-spending business users.
Vodafone has kicked off the latest round of price-cutting in the business space by introducing a flat-rate mobile broadband tariff of £25 a month, almost half the £45 it charged before. It has also amended its "fair usage" policy so users can download three times the amount of data that they could under previous contracts.
In order to capture more roaming revenue, the company has also introduced a tariff that charges contract customers £8.50 for a 24-hour session to use data cards abroad. It has also doubled the amount of data that subscribers to its £95-a-month Mobile Broadband Travel tariff can use, while increasing the number of networks on to which those customers can roam.
The tariffs will apply to all new customers and business customers coming to the end of their contracts.
Vodafone is the largest data card provider in the UK with 280,000 users, most of whom subscribe to a flat-rate tariff.
Vodafone has also introduced a new 24-hour tariff for occasional users or business customers who are not sure whether they would use a data card frequently enough to justify the £25-a-month expenditure. The customer will pay £8.50 for the 24-hour session, but will need to fork out around £120 to buy the data card. Customers who sign up to the 18-month contracts will receive the data card free, or receive a £50 refund if they have recently invested in a data card.
Mobile internet is a significant revenue driver for mobile operators looking to push mobile email, video, music and instant messaging products. The European Union has described laptop data cards as "the most significant data stream since the introduction of SMS". As a result, mobile operators have started competing fiercely for customers who need access to the internet wherever they are. That has led companies such as Vodafone to compete with traditional business telecoms service providers like BT, but also with a host of wifi operators that offer broadband access in places like coffee shops, hotels and train stations. Wifi, a different technology to that used by mobile phone network operators, offers stronger broadband reception, but only within range of a "hotspot".
Vodafone's price cuts could trigger moves from other mobile companies looking to take a larger slice of the business market with companies such as T-Mobile and Orange sure to react. T-Mobile's service remains slightly cheaper than Vodafone's but with different "fair usage" policies, while Orange charges as customers use data.
