The vast majority of 3’s mobile broadband users use less than 5GB per month, with the average monthly usage for subscribers to their laptop deals at around 1.5GB. This means that 3 are reducing the strain put on the their network resources by their heaviest users, and not their average and light (and even fairly heavy) users.

This move is in line with last month’s announcement about 3’s traffic shaping strategy, as that too is aimed at increasing the available resources for the average user by reducing the use of the very heavy users.

We’re in favour of anything that improves overall mobile broadband service and the experience provided for consumers. The fact that very heavy users are penalised is not ideal, certainly, but given the constraints of the available resources, it’s the only real option, and we wholeheartedly support it.

Why Do We Need Traffic Shaping?

As broadband speeds increase, software and website developers create more and more data intensive applications. P2P file sharing applications, for example, can use up much more bandwidth than an average person browsing the web, and as video streaming quality improves, it uses more bandwidth to stream the higher resolution video.

The majority of users use their mobile broadband connections to browse the web, and send and receive emails, and these users tend to suffer a reduction in quality of service when data-intensive applications are being used by other users in their area. Traffic shaping essentially prioritises the more common, less data-intensive activities, over the less common data-heavy ones.

What Is Traffic Shaping?

In short, traffic shaping aims to improve the quality of service for the majority of users by increasing the bandwidth available to them. However, this comes at a cost to “power users,” who will see the bandwidth available for certain activities such as P2P file sharing and heavy usage of video streaming reduced.

Unlike throttling, which has been used by mobile and fixed-line broadband providers for some time, traffic shaping doesn’t target the user, it targets the activity.

For example, with throttling, a very heavy user who consistently degrades the quality of service for others in the area, by hogging bandwidth, would find themselves limited across all activities – their bandwidth would be individually throttled to reduce the impact they have on other users.

There are several problems with this method, but the most important in terms of quality of service, is that it is reactive rather than pro-active. When a heavy user is detected, they are already hogging bandwidth and degrading service – the network can prevent this user from continuing to do this but other users have already suffered poor service quality. This has been one of the causes of perceived poor performance from mobile broadband services.

Traffic shaping addresses this problem by taking the pro-active approach of limiting bandwidth for any user when participating in certain bandwidth-heavy activities. When a user is using a P2P file sharing network, for example, a traffic shaping system will limit the amount of bandwidth available to that user for that specific activity, whilst still allowing them to use their mobile broadband service for other, less data-intensive, activities without restriction.

What Does All This Mean For 3’s Users?

This should improve the 3 mobile broadband service for the majority of users, and even for heavy users when they’re using the service for less data-intensive activities, as standard web-browsing activities will effectively have priority over file downloads and heavy video consumption.

Users will probably notice a drop in service quality when using P2P file sharing networks and using more than one video stream at once – for example, when multiple users watch video simultaneously, sharing a connection using 3’s Mifi modem, or if a user has more than one video window open at the same time.

If used correctly, traffic shaping will be very effective. The main source of irritation for most mobile broadband users is slow loading web pages and emails, and in a perfect world, with infinite bandwidth, the networks would be able to solve this issue without impacting the “power users” who are using their connections for very data-intensive activities. However, bandwidth is limited, and if 3 can improve the quality of service received by the majority of their paying customers, we can live with having to use fixed-line broadband for the data-heavy stuff.

Bottom line: Service will improve for general use. If you’re using P2P and heavy video services, get fixed-line broadband instead.

During the last week we’ve broken down the so called “Free Laptop” mobile broadband offers to reveal the real costs for each laptop. We then compared some of them with the prices charged for the same laptop at popular online retailers such as Amazon, LaptopsDirect.co.uk and www.PCWorld.co.uk. Findings were mixed, with some providing good value and others being far from it.

Here’s how we calculate the real cost of the laptop over the course of your mobile broadband contract, with an example from 3:

Contract details: £25 per month over 24 months for 15GB of monthly data allowance

15GB of data without the laptop would cost £15 per month, so you pay an extra £10 each month for the laptop deal.

This means that the effective cost of the laptop, over your 24 month contract is:
£10 x 24 months = £240

This deal actually works out reasonably good value for money and receives one of our best-buy awards (details below).

So how do the rest of the offers stack up? Do they offer consumers value for money and the equivalent of a cheap credit agreement, or are the mobile networks taking advantage of a new and potentially confusing marketplace to overcharge their users on hardware?

Out of the eleven offers that we compared, we found that five of them offered either good or reasonable value for money, whereas six of them offered poor value. We also found a huge range of price differences: the best of the mobile networks’ offers worked out around £20 cheaper then buying your laptop separately and up-front, and the worst worked out 71% more expensive.

3 came out way out ahead in terms of providing laptops at a fair cost, with five good or reasonable value laptop offers, whilst none of the other providers currently have any laptop offers that we consider to be good value.

The MBS Best Buy Laptop Awards

We have two separate best-buy awards, which will be awarded each time we publish this report on a monthly basis.

The first is based purely on price – a comparison between the effective cost of the laptop over the course of a mobile broadband contract, versus the price charged for the same laptop at various online retailers.

This is the MBS Laptop Value Award, and goes to 3 this month for their Samsung R720 laptop offer.

The second award is based on both price comparison and a study of laptop reviews from various reputable sources to gain an insight into laptop performance versus price. Here, we’re looking for a laptop deal that not only offers the laptop at a reasonable price, but which also offers a laptop with value-for-money performance.

This is the MBS Laptop All-Rounder Award and also goes to 3 this month for their Samsung N130 laptop offer.

A Detailed Comparison

The Good (5)

Samsung R720 – MBS Laptop Value Award

Provider: 3
Deal Details: £40 month, 24 months, 15GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £25 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £25 × 24 months = £600

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £619

Verdict: Thumbs-up. This laptop costs less with 3 than it does if you buy it up-front at Amazon (we didn’t find it anywhere else) and your payments are spread over 24 months. Great deal.

Toshiba T130

Provider: 3
Deal Details: £40 per month, 18 months, 5GB data
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £25 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £25 × 18 months = £450

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £469

Verdict: Thumbs-up. Another great value deal from 3. At £19 less than you’d pay for the laptop up-front with Amazon and payments spread over 18 months, this is great value.

Samsung N130 – MBS Laptop All-Rounder Award

Provider: 3
Deal Details: £25 month, 24 months, 15GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £10 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £10 x 24 months = £240

Provider: 3
Deal Details: £20 month, 24 months, 1GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £10 per month
Difference: £10 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £10 x 24 months = £240

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – 231.85
www.pcworld.co.uk – £231.85
www.laptopsdirect.co.uk – £231.97

Verdict: Thumbs-up. You can spread your payments over 24 months and pay just £8.15 more than the cheapest price we found elsewhere.

Compaq Mini 311

Provider: 3
Deal Details: £35 per month, 18 months, 5GB data
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £20 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £20 × 18 months = £360

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £349.36

Verdict: Thumbs-up. This is a good deal from 3 – you pay just over £10 more than you would when buying the laptop up-front from Amazon, and you spread your payments over 18 months.

Compaq CQ61

Provider: 3
Deal Details: £30 month, 24 months, 15GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £15 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £15 × 24 months = £360

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £339.99

Verdict: Thumbs-up. You’ll pay around £20 more with the 3 deal, than you would buying the laptop separately, but you may find that spreading the payment is worth the extra cost.

The Bad (6)

Samsung R519

Provider: 3
Deal Details: £35 month, 24 months, 15GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £20 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £20 x 24 months = £480

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £429
www.laptopsdirect.co.uk – £389.96

Verdict: Thumbs-down. The effective cost of this laptop on the 24 month contract from 3 is around £90 more than you’ll pay at www.laptopsdirect.co.uk if you buy the laptop up-front. Even if you take the option to spread payment over 36 months (1 year longer than the 3 contract) at laptopsdirect.co.uk you’ll only pay £470 – £10 less than the 3 deal.

Samsung R519

Provider: O2
Deal Details: £34.26 month, 24 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.69 per month
Difference: £19.57 per month
One-off Initial Payment: £29.38
Effective Cost of Laptop: £19.57 × 24 months + £29.38 initial payment = £499.06

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £429
www.laptopsdirect.co.uk – £399.97

Verdict: Thumbs-down. At almost 25% more than buying the laptop up-front from LaptopsDirect.co.uk, this doesn’t represent value for money.

Toshiba L300

Provider: Orange
Deal Details: £29.36 month, 24 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.68 per month
Difference: £14.68 per month
One-off Initial Payment: £65
Effective Cost of Laptop: £14.68 × 24 months + £65 initial payment = £417.32

Provider: Orange
Deal Details: £34.25 month, 18 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.68 per month
Difference: £19.57 per month
One-off Initial Payment: £90
Effective Cost of Laptop: £19.57 × 18 months + £90 initial payment = £442.26

Laptop available separately at:
www.laptopsdirect.co.uk – £269.97

Verdict: Thumbs-down. With the cheapest of these Orange offers, the effective cost of the laptop is 54% more than buying the laptop separately from www.laptopsdirect.co.uk – our advice: buy separately!

Dell Inspiron Mini 10

Provider: Vodafone
Deal Details: £30 month, 24 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £15 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £15 × 24 months = £360

Laptop available separately at:
www.pcworld.co.uk – £249.99

Verdict: Thumbs-down. You’ll save over £100 buying this laptop elsewhere. The effective cost of the laptop with Vodafone is 44% more than if you buy it up-front from www.pcworld.co.uk

Samsung N310

Provider: Orange
Deal Details: £29.36 month, 24 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.68 per month
Difference: £14.68 per month
One-off Initial Payment: £65
Effective Cost of Laptop: £14.68 × 24 months + £65 initial payment = £417.32

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £289.20
www.pcworld.co.uk – £294.70
www.laptopsdirect.co.uk – £308.97

Verdict: Thumbs-down. The effective cost of this laptop on the Orange 24 month contract is 44% more than you’ll pay if you buy the laptop up-front elsewhere. This means that you’re paying more than £120 extra with the Orange deal.

Compaq Presario

Provider: Vodafone
Deal Details: £40 per month, 24 months, 3GB data
Same Data Without Laptop: £15 per month
Difference: £25 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £25 × 24 months = £600

Laptop available separately at:
www.amazon.co.uk – £378.69

Verdict: Thumbs-down. Save over £200 by buying this laptop up-front from Amazon.

Laptops we couldn’t find elsewhere.

We didn’t find comparable laptop specifications for the models below, so we’ll simply provide you with the cost calculations.

Compaq Mini 700

Provider: Orange
Deal Details: £29.36 month, 24 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.68 per month
Difference: £14.68 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £14.68 × 24 months = £352.32

Provider: Orange
Deal Details: £34.25 month, 18 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.68 per month
Difference: £19.57 per month
One-off Initial Payment: £15
Effective Cost of Laptop: £19.57 × 18 months + £15 initial payment = £367.26

Asus 1000H GO

Provider: Orange
Deal Details: £29.36 month, 24 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.68 per month
Difference: £14.68 per month
Effective Cost of Laptop: £14.68 × 24 months = £352.32

Provider: Orange
Deal Details: £34.25 month, 18 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.68 per month
Difference: £19.57 per month
One-off Initial Payment: £10
Effective Cost of Laptop: £19.57 × 18 months + £10 initial payment = £362.26

Asus 1005H

Provider: O2
Deal Details: £24.48 month, 24 months, 3GB
Same Data Without Laptop: £14.69 per month
Difference: £9.97 per month
One-off Initial Payment: £29.38
Effective Cost of Laptop: £9.97 × 24 months + £29.38 initial payment = £268.66

We first noticed irritated Tweets through our Twitter monitoring system a couple of weeks ago, with Twitter users complaining that their mobile broadband services were out of action following an update to the new Mac OS.

There are, of course, consumer issues here, as some users simply can’t access a service that they’re paying a monthly fee for. Unfortunately, at this stage, all we can do is call upon the networks and dongle manufacturers to provide software upgrades ASAP and consider compensating users who’s service is considerably interrupted. In the meantime, there are some ways around the technical issues, and we’ll round up the ones that we know of below.

(Please note that we haven’t tested these ourselves, so please let us know if you find that they don’t work. Also, if you have any advice to add, please do so in the comments section below)

If you’re with 3 try the method advised in this blog post.

For O2 users, try this advice.

If you’re with T-Mobile, give this advice a whirl (be sure to read the first comment after the post too).

Vodafone claim that this software update will solve the problem for their dongles.

Orange say that they will release a software update next week to solve the issue. If you’re not already on the Snow Leopard OS, we’d recommend holding out until that’s released. If you already have the new Mac OS, the best we can find at the moment is this advice for Australian users:

Huawei Mobile Broadband & Snow Leopard (this MacTalk article describes how to work around this issue for most of the Huawei dongles).

Another Useful Link For Snow Leopard Users

If your thinking of upgrading to Snow Leopard, you may also need to consider some of the other applications that you currently use, as there are other compatibility issues with the new OS for the Apple Mac. For a list of known issues, and a downloadable application which scans your hard drive to let you know which of these are relevant for you, go to this page.

If you have any other advice for others who are having problems with Snow Leopard and their mobile broadband services, please add to the comments section below.

Imagine a world…

What if advertising didn’t exist – if it suddenly disappeared right now and there was no way to buy exposure to a market? How would the mobile networks find customers? We’d still need them, as mobile connectivity is now a must have, and there’s no way we (as a nation) would give it up – so we’d still be using it and paying for it. The size of the market wouldn’t get any smaller if the networks didn’t advertise.

If that’s the case, then the only reason to advertise is to gain market share. What if, instead of spending millions on advertising, one of the networks put that money into improving their quality of service? What if, with this cash injection into their infrastructure, they could offer service guarantees to their users? And what if, their quality and consistency of service was undeniably better than the other networks? Would they gain market share then? Would you tell your friends? Probably.

It’s a risky move, as with anything like this, you simply won’t know if it’ll work out until the idea is tried and tested. Unfortunately there are some things that can’t be tested on a small scale – you have to go all in, a watered-down version simply wouldn’t work, because it’s not just about providing a better service, it’s also about proving that your all about a better service.

Just a thought.

We thought about adding user reviews to the MobileBroadbandSupermarket.co.uk website to help our visitors make confident decisions, and then realised that people are already talking about their experiences with the mobile broadband networks, via the Twitter micro-blogging service. So, we’re collecting all Tweets about mobile broadband from 12 different cities, and logging each one that is either positive or negative about a particular provider.

We’re taking tweets from a 25 mile radius around the following 12 UK cities:

London, Bristol, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, Newcastle/Sunderland, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff and Sheffield.

The Rules

We want to ensure that we get an accurate picture of the general mood of Twitter users when it comes to their own experiences with their mobile broadband services, so we’ve drawn up a set of rules to help us decide whether a Tweet is positive, negative, or not relevant:

A relevant Tweet must:

~ Reference either a personal experience, or first-hand word-of-mouth comment about a mobile broadband service.

For example, “My Vodafone mobile broadband is great!” and “My friend John has a really fast connection with his T-Mobile dongle,” are both relevant, positive comments. “I’ve heard that 3 are really good,” and “Orange have won an award for their mobile broadband” wouldn’t count, as they don’t refer to personal experiences.

~ Be explicit about the network/ provider being referred to, mentioning them by name.

Where’s The Data?

Although we’ve been collecting data for a couple of weeks already, we won’t publish statistics until we have enough to draw some meaningful conclusions, so keep your eyes peeled, as we’ll release them soon.

Once we’ve released the first batch of statistics, we’ll have daily updated stats here on the site, where users can easily find out how each network is doing. We’ll also publish a quarterly report with findings based on deeper analysis of the data.

Feel free to leave questions, suggestions or comments below – we’re interested to hear what you think about this.

Currently, only 3 offer this technology, and we think it’ll be a winner. Why? Because it offers the benefits of mobile broadband to users of the iPod touch, WiFi gaming consoles, and any other WiFi enabled device. It also makes life much simpler for those without a land-line, who want to use mobile broadband as their main broadband connection at home – with 3’s MiFi, mobile broadband can easily be shared between different users and devices.

We’re hoping that other networks will adopt this idea too. Anyone?

1. The Student Guide To Mobile Broadband

We published The Student Guide in September, just as new students were getting into the swing of things at their new universities. We wanted to ensure that students know what to look out for and how best to decide what type of mobile broadband would suit their needs (if any).

2. Our Tree Planting Scheme

We launched this just last week, and we’re thoroughly enjoying planting trees! We’re planting a tree each and every time a mobile broadband purchase is referred through the Mobile Broadband Supermarket website. In other words, if you use the site to find the deal that’s right for you, then click through to the provider’s website and buy, they let us know about it and we plant a tree!

We’ve partnered with Mokugift for this initiative, which is great for several reasons:

We love what they do and think Mokugift is a great enterprise.
They’re part of the UNEP “Billion Tree Campaign”
They allow us to give the trees we plant away to you!
(Click here and see the green box on the right for details)

Go ahead, plant a tree for free!

3. The Monthly Round-Up and Dongle Competition

A couple of weeks ago we launched the Monthly Round-Up, an email newsletter that we’ll be se3nding out to subscribers once a month, which includes the latest mobile broadband deals, current best buys, news and something fun (not telling what!)

Each time the Round-Up goes out, we’ll pick a winner from the list of subscribers and send them a shiny new Pay As You Go mobile broadband dongle.

Phew, there you have it – the latest from us. Oh yes, and there’s MiFi from 3 mobile too, but we’ll blog about that one tomorrow!

The Guardian reported yesterday that the eagerly awaited 4G technologies are imminent for some Scandinavian countries – quite fitting, since Sweden is credited with starting the whole 2G thing and paving the way for digital data passing across the airwaves. Unfortunately, it seems that we might have to wait a little longer here in the UK, thanks largely to a mix of bureaucracy and some overzealous investments by the mobile networks during the initial 3G rush.

The good news is that 4G services are already being tested here, so it looks as though we’ll simply have to watch this space, for the time being at least.

Read the full Guardian article:
Newly asked questions: When will we move to 4G mobile phone networks?

EU officials have announced that they intend to invest €18 million into the research and development of advanced 4G technologies. Experts believe that these new technologies will be capable of delivering speeds up to 100 times faster than the ones we get now, which will quite probably leave fixed line broadband services dead in the water.

Whether or not these speeds are actually reached, we can be certain that speeds, coverage areas, and reliability will keep improving, and this EU announcement is a very positive sign for the future of mobile broadband.

You can read more about mobile broadband technologies at our mini-guide to the History Of Mobile Connectivity.

Will this effect the experience for 3’s mobile broadband customers? We don’t think so as it’s only relevant during the “dead” time when they’d usually be watching the screen and waiting for the “connected” message. If ads are imaginative, relevant, entertaining or useful, it could even improve the experience by giving users something to fill the space during connection.

As long as 3 are sensitive to the user experience and don’t begin to annoy users with adverts, we’re all in favour. Why? Because if 3 can generate revenue with this kind of venture, they can offer their mobile broadband services at a lower cost.

For 3’s offers see our section for 3 mobile broadband.