Laptops that are to include mobile broadband access are becoming increasingly popular according to Orange, who has said that the need for a one-stop provider to fulfil their mobile computing requirements is becoming something that both consumers and business buyers need.

September saw the first select HP laptops being sold either with a 3G modem embedded or an external USB dongle by the provider, and since February it has had the 3G facility built into the HTC Shift miniature laptops.

Director of devices at Orange, Francois Mehieu said “We have found a huge appetite from customers who want to talk to a single provider, and we believe a greater number will be connected at the point of sale in future.”

The main concern for small-to-medium sized businesses, said Mahieu, is support, with many companies wanting a single point of contact for issues and with connectivity being especially important. He also added that enterprise customers were also interested in support of a similar level according to phone conversations the carrier has recently started receiving.

Mr Mahieu said “We want to present ourselves as the company for business customers to go to so they can connect wherever they are.” According to Mr Mahieu, all laptops in the future will contain wide area network (WAN) connectivity embedded in some way, although achieving this is still quite some way off. He said “We are at least two years away from everyone in a company being able to use a connected laptop.”

Mahieu also went on to say that the move is being held back at the moment be budgetary constraints. One of the constraints causing the problem is the cycle of replacement, however, the other is that there are separate budget that are mostly handled by different managers with regards to computer equipment and communications.