Best For Broadband

3 Mobile are offering more fantastic offers on Mobile Broadband. They have launched mobile broadband plans from £30 per month inclusive of a free HP Laptop and USB modem! Of course you don’t get something for nothing and 3 Mobile are offering the free laptop provided you take up an 18 or 24 month contract.

As with all these deals you need to determine whether the cost of the laptop offsets the additional cost. For example if you already have a relatively new laptop you might decide a cheaper contract without laptop is better.

It’s also worth considering whether you want to be tied to an 18 or 24 month contract. Mobile broadband is big business and costs should come down.

Laptops include:
HP 530 with 1G RAM, 120G Hard Drive and Vista Home Basic
HP 2133 with 1G RAM, 120G Hard Drive and Vista Home Basic
HP DV6000 with 3G RAM, 250G Hard Drive and Vista Home Basic

The HP DV6000 is not available on an 18th month contract by the way.

The package costs are as follows:
HP 530 on 18 month contract from £35 and 24 month contract from £30
HP 2133 24 month contract from £35
HP DV6000 on 24 month contract from £40

Visit 3 Mobile for more details.

The Carphone Warehouse have come up with a new offer for mobile broadband customers who sign up with Orange. If you take out a 24 month contract they’ll give you a free webbook VIA C7-M 1.6Ghz. According to the blurb “the webbook is perfect for those who lead a busy life and it’s great for surfing the internet and accessing your email”.

The webbook retails for £249 and if you do take up the offer you will be charged a £14.99 delivery charge.

As with all these offers it’s worth weighing up the length of contract versus the freebie that’s on offer. 24 months is a long time to be tied into a mobile broadband contract at a monthly cost of £25. You’re also limited on Orange to just 3GB a month.

As a comparison you can get Orange Mobile Broadband for £15 a month on an 18 month contract from Orange Direct. It comes with a free dongle, so that leaves you £180 better off – provided you have your own laptop – and let’s face it, if you’re considering mobile broadband it’s probably because you already have a laptop.

However, the webbook offer is exclusive to Carphone Warehouse and is ideal if you’re looking for a more portable machine.

BT Broadband have announced the launch of their new Hub – imaginatively called Hub 2.0 (what is it with this 2.0? Why not just Hub 2!?). The new Hub is sexier on the outside but its beauty is definitely more than skin deep and it delivers up to twice the wireless range of all other UK broadband providers.

The new Hub 2.0 will be available free with online Option 2 orders.

Option 3 customers will get the Hub 2.0 plus the hub phone so that they can take advantage of cheap broadband telephone calls.

Option 1 customers can choose to have the new Hub in place of the free wired router at a cost of £50!

The adage give with one hand and take from another is true though as from 18th July BT Broadband rates will be as follows:

Option 1 – pay £7.95 for the first three months (£15.99 thereafter)
Option 2 – pay £13.99 for the first three months (£20.99 thereafter)
Option 3 – pay £18.99 for the first three months (£24.99 thereafter)
Broadband Anywhere – Pay £23.99 for the first three months (£29.99 thereafter)

Well someone’s got to pay for the superfast £1.5billion expansion that BT have planned!

If having free broadband wasn’t incentive enough to join TalkTalk they’ve added an extra bit of spice to new customers joining them in July. To celebrate the release of the new Disney Pixar movie Wall-E TalkTalk are giving away a family holiday to San Francisco. The prize includes return flights from London to San Francisco, transfers from airport/hotel/airport, hotel accommodation for 4 nights/5 day, excursions to Pixar Animation Studios, the Metrreon exhibition and the Exploratorium, travel insurance and $100 spending money!

Closing date for the competition is 31st July. You can also still take advantage of the 3 months half-price call plan offer on Talk Global with Broadband. You’ll get free broadband and a call plan price for just £3.25 (usually £6.49) for the first 3 months.

If you’re very quick you can also enter another TalkTalk competition! Up for grabs is a £7000 Home Entertainment system and entry is easy. All you have to do is use their postcode checker and see if you can get free broadband. You may get a telephone call from a sales representative but for the chance to own a brand new TV, iMac, Macbook, Xbox 360 and loads more cool gadgets it’s a small price to pay. You have until the 4th July to enter.

Eclipse Internet have refreshed their business and residential connectivity portfolios to ensure that their products perform equally well using ADSL 1 and ADSL 2+ technologies (ADSL 2+ is due later in the year).

They are also moving away from the unlimited usage model, instead using mainly inclusive usage allowances. The reason for this say is it will enable them to provide through put speeds for their customers that are as close to the maximum that their line will support as possible.

What’s more these new products enable customers to optimise their broadband by setting differing priority levels for the different activities they perform online, so assisting in the overall improvement of the customer line speed experience. So for example you can choose to give the highest priority to simple web browsing and emailing and none to gaming or vice versa.

The following products are now available:

Business Products
1. Home Office
2. Business 20
3. Business 50
4. Business Unlimited

Residential Products
1. Home Lite Broadband
2. Home Select Broadband
3. Home Pro Broadband

It’s unclear whether existing Eclipse customers will be moved on to these new tariffs.