Broadband users to get a dongle for a fiver from Virgin Media

As recession-crunching telecom services hit the market, Virgin Media , a UK cable operator has claimed that it has launched the cheapest bundled 3G mobile broadband offer ever in the UK.

As a complimenting product to its current high-speed wired broadband service Virgin is offering a USB dongle with a download limit of 1GB.

With other mobile operators like Vodafone, T-Mobile and 3, prices are already quite competitive as they all offer reduced price deals for their services to ensure that their current customer base stays with them.

One example of this is a USB Dongle offer from Vodafone broadband offering 3GB of downloads for £15 per month and 5GB at £25 per month and may soon also be competing with the Virgin offer by providing a 1GB offer. Also, with the netbook market ‘apparently soon-to-boom’ Vodafone is preparing itself by releasing a contract based mini Dell PC in a similar way that mobile phones are currently offered. With a 1GB download limit costing £25 per month and 3GB at £30 the Dell Inspiron Mini comes with embedded 3G data access (no fuss, no wires).
In an effort to appeal to mobile phone users instead of PC users there is likely to be an increase in netbooks offered on contracts by other mobile network providers. This is because mobile phone users are more used to signing for hardware on 18 month offers as opposed to the outright purchase of items.

The way in which this new offer links in with Virgin Media’s overall portfolio is the most interesting thing as it make the combination of TV, Broadband, fixed voice, mobile voice, and now mobile broadband a quintuple play by the network operator.

Customers who have either Virgin Media’s 8Mbps ADSL with voice package or its 10 or 20Mbps cable broadband package will be the only people at the moment who can take advantage of this £5 deal.
The 1GB limit for this deal has been calculated by Virgin as enough for a little web browsing and the odd email to fall within the limit. Although if this limit is breached a charge of 1.46p per MB (or an extra 1GB for £14.60) will be made which is more than reasonable.