Broadband News

3 sweeps up at mobile broadband awards

Friday, 17 October 2008

By Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

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Mobile broadband provider 3 has won a host of accolades, including the title of Best Overall Provider, at a recent mobile broadband awards ceremony (17-10-08).

3 (www.Three.co.uk) took home four out of the eight awards, and judges said of its Best Overall Provider win: “The Best Overall Provider award takes into account all the most important factors, pricing, value for money, speeds, coverage, customer satisfaction, selection of packages etc. 3 won this award due to a number factors, in particular for the company’s efforts to significantly bring down the cost of mobile broadband.”

"3 won this award due to a number factors, in particular for the company’s efforts to significantly bring down the cost of mobile broadband"

The provider, which offers a range of mobile broadband packages starting at just £10 a month for 1GB as well as a wide range of free laptop offers, USB dongles and even mobile broadband routers, also came top in the Best Value, Laptop Bundle and Pay As You Go categories. The provider also offers 50 per cent discounts to 3 mobile phone customers.

Data from more than 4,000 consumers was complied for the awards between January and September this year, but while Vodafone (www.Vodafone.co.uk) and T-Mobile (www.T-Mobile.co.uk) also took home two awards each, relative newcomers to the market O2 (www.O2.co.uk) and Orange (www.Orange.co.uk) didn’t get a mention.

Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com), which only launched its own mobile broadband offering this month, wasn’t available at the time of the research.

Vodafone took home the awards for the Fastest Actual Speed and the Best Coverage, with judges saying: “Vodafone wins this award based on an average actual speed of 2.74mb. Whilst this average is far lower than the up to 7.2mb speed they advertise, it was still considerably higher than the average actual speed of 1.77mb from all mobile broadband service providers” and “Lack of coverage resulting in poor speeds or complete loss of connection is the biggest gripe of all mobile broadband customers. Vodafone won [the Best Coverage] award because its product achieved more consistent speeds during our testing and also due to the fact that it received the least amount of customer complaints about coverage.”

However, they added that “We still feel [coverage] is the biggest area for future improvement for mobile broadband”.

T-Mobile won the Customer Satisfaction and Fairest Pricing awards. “T-Mobile scored the highest marks with an impressive average customer satisfaction rating of 71 per cent, marginally ahead of Vodafone who scored 70 per cent,” said judges. Of its win for Fairest Prising, they said: “T-Mobile was the clear winner of this award as it is the only mobile broadband provider to have no extra fees for exceeding download limits. This becomes more impressive when compared to other providers that can charge up to £100 per extra 1GB of data usage.”

Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “There are so many things to think about when choosing a mobile broadband provider. As well as taking local coverage into account, you also need to think about how much you expect to download each month, whether you’ll incur charges for exceeding your limit and if it’s worth signing up to a longer contract just for a free dongle.

“As great as it is, there can be a lot of hidden costs to mobile broadband, so make sure you do your research, compare broadband providers and think about your needs before signing on the dotted line,” he advised.

Source: Broadband-Expert.co.uk

Related article - Hidden costs of mobile broadband.