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Top 10 Broadband started tracking mobile broadband sales six months ago, and has seen uptake increase by over 50% month-on-month since then. "It is absolutely taking off, people are loving the broadband dongles," says Jessica Mcardle of Top 10 Broadband. "Lots of people are using laptops and wanting to have more flexibility."

If the strong growth continues, then mobile broadband could overtake traditional connections within two years, the company claims.

Mcardle believes that mobile broadband has notable advantages over Wi-Fi hotspots for mobile users. "A lot of places are coming up with it [Wi-Fi], but outside of cafés and those places it is handy to know that you can have a broadband connection," she says. "You can have that connection at just £10 per month.
For that kind of pricing it's very

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competitive."

Yet while the price of mobile broadband packages may be attractive, their data caps certainly hamper their appeal. 3's £10-a-month Broadband Lite package, for example, has a monthly download cap of only 1GB. Even its £25 per month package has a limit of 7GB, which compares poorly to ADSL and cable offerings of a similar price.

Speeds also suffer in comparison to fixed-line. The maximum connection speed in 3G areas is around 7Mb/sec, while cable connections will soon be capable of reaching 50Mb/sec. Overall, it seems more likely that people will use mobile broadband as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, their home connection.

Bulging bills

In recent months there have been several cases of people running up extremely large bills by using mobile phone data packages as mobile broadband connections.

In January a Vodafone customer was served with a bill for £27,000, after having downloaded "20 or 30" television shows over his mobile data package, believing that it included unlimited data.

"The thing with any broadband is that you really need to read the terms and conditions and know what you're signing up for. It's just a case of knowing what you're going to be using," explains Mcardle.