BT Scare Big 5 by offering Free Mobile Broadband to Businesses

BT has announced that it will be offering a free mobile broadband service for smaller businesses, offering a USB stick which uses Vodafone's HSUPA network when they sign up to Option 2 or 3 on BT’s Business Total Broadband package for 24 months.

After reports that estimated that that 47 per cent of European broadband users will use mobile broadband networks and that nearly a quarter of broadband-equipped sites will use mobile-only, the likes of BT have needed a strategy to acquire some of the freely available business in the rapidly growing mobile broadband market.

"Fixed operators need to come up with strategies for dealing with a rapid and invasive expansion of mobile broadband into their core growth area of consumer broadband," Rupert Wood commented, a principal analyst at Analysys Mason.

Wood also said "Nearly half of fixed broadband users currently have a usage profile that is no higher than the average usage on mobile broadband, making the size of the addressable market for mobile broadband as a substitutive consumer proposition enormous.”

Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, said: ‘[This] brings together the complementary worlds of 3G, Wi-Fi and fixed-line broadband for customers in a truly powerful converged offering.’

O2, one of the big 5 mobile broadband providers also offer free mobile broadband to customers when they take out home broadband with them at £20 per month, so it isn’t just businesses that can benefit from this value for money offer.

Compare mobile broadband and home broadband offers available today.