Broadband News & Mobile Broadband News

O2 (www.o2.co.uk) has announced plans to invest ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ to extend its UK mobile broadband coverage.

The multi-year programme of investment means O2 will be building 1,500 new network sites across the UK in 2010, 40 of which will be live in London by this Christmas.

O2’s Chief Technology Officer, Derek McManusfor said: “Anticipating growth in demand for mobile services, we have quarter on quarter increased investment in our voice and data networks. Our £500m investment over the last two years has enabled us to offer our customers the best products in the world, including the Apple iPhone and Palm Pre”.

McManusfor continued, “In the past 12 months the mobile industry has seen an unprecedented change in demand. The introduction of world-class devices, in combination with a wide variety of data applications, has brought about a dramatic change in customer behaviour and created an exponential demand on mobile data networks”.

“We are now aggressively accelerating our network growth programme to ensure we have significant headroom for the future and retain our focus on being number one for customer satisfaction”.

O2’s mobile broadband network currently covers 84% of the UK, well behind that of Orange and 3 who provide over 90% UK coverage.

O2 (www.o2.co.uk) has refreshed its mobile broadband laptop deals in time for Christmas with the addition of 2 new laptops.

The new models added are the Asus Eee PC 1005H netbook worth £215 and the Samsung R519 laptop worth £399.

The ultra-portable Asus 1005H netbook weighs just 1.4kg and comes with a 160Gb hard drive, 1Gb RAM and a 10.2″ widescreen display.

There’s also a a webcam, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth connectivity plus Windows XP Home Edition installed.

The Asus netbook, together with O2 Mobile Broadband speeds up to 3.6Mbps and a 3GB data allowance costs just £24.48 a month. A free O2 dongle is also included.

The high specification Samsung R519 laptop has an Intel Pentium dual core processor, 250Gb hard drive, 2Gb RAM and 15.6″ widescreen display.

The laptop is Wi-Fi enabled and includes a webcam and Windows Vista Home Premium.

Combined with O2 Mobile Broadband speeds up to 3.6Mbps, a 3GB monthly data usage allowance and a free O2 dongle, this mobile broadband and laptop deal works out at £34.26 a month.

The Samsung laptop and the Asus netbook also come with a 2 year warranty.

Readers can find out more at the www.o2.co.uk website or our O2 mobile broadband & laptop review.

O2 (www.o2.co.uk) has announced that from today it is offering 50% off its Pay & Go mobile broadband dongle.

The exclusive online offer, available till midnight on Tuesday 17th November, means users can order the pay as you go O2 dongle for just £14.67.

There’s no contract tie in with this O2 dongle. Users can simply top up the dongle whenever they want with the amount of data they require.

For example, users can pay £2 a day for 500MB’s of data, £7.50 per week for 1GB, or £15 a month for 3GB.

Once plugged into a users laptop, the O2 dongle connects to the O2 mobile broadband network which offers speeds up to 3.6Mbps.

There’s also unlimited access to over 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK with The Cloud and BT Openzone.

Interested readers can find out more at the o2.co.uk website
or our O2 mobile broadband review.

O2 (o2.co.uk) is to test next generation mobile broadband, known as LTE (Long Term Evolution) within the UK by next summer.

The news comes following an announcement by O2’s parent company Telefonica that it plans to commence LTE test projects in 6 countries including the UK, Spain, the Czech Republic and Germany.

LTE next generation mobile broadband is said to offer maximum download speeds up to 340Mbps. However, these are just theoretical speeds and it is unlikely that customers will experience these maximum speeds.

The O2 LTE field test are likely be carried out by technology suppliers such as Nokia, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent.

When talking about the trials, the COO of Telefonica, Julio Linares said: “At Telefonica we are working with the conviction that we can only offer our clients the maximum levels of quality and innovation. To do this, we are defining our strategy and the rollout of LTE with the objective of driving mobile broadband”.

O2 currently offer mobile broadband speeds up to 3.6Mbps with prices starting from £9.78 a month.

O2 (www.o2.co.uk) has confirmed that its half price mobile broadband dongle offer will end at 8.30am this Thursday the 6th August 2009.

Usually £29.34, the O2 dongle costs just a one-off £14.67 and is available with O2’s Pay and Go mobile broadband tariff which has no contract tie in.

O2’s Pay & Go broadband tariff means once customers have received their O2 dongle they can top it up whenever they want with the internet access they need.

Top up charges vary from £2 a day for 500MB’s of data to £15 a month for 3GB’s.

Mobile broadband speeds up to 3.6Mbps are achievable from O2 while there’s also unlimited access to over 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots across the UK.

The half price O2 dongle can be brought online at the o2.co.uk website.

Readers can also review O2 mobile broadband packages here.