Competition in the residential broadband market is set to intensify today as mobile operator Vodafone launches its own service. Called Vodafone at Home, the 8Mbit/s service, which is based on an 18-month contract and includes line rental, will cost £25 for customers who have a current mobile phone contract with the company and £35 otherwise.
Vodafone at Home also offers a 25 percent reduction in calls to mobile phones and includes unlimited anytime calls to UK landlines of up to 60 minutes. There will also be a 30-day money back guarantee and 24/7 UK phone support.
Vodafone’s customers will get a free connection, a free pre-configured Netgear Ethernet router, 10 email addresses, and a six-month subscription to Norton’s Internet Security 2006 package. The service, which uses BT Wholesale’s 8Mbit/s ADSL Max technology, covers 97 percent of the UK’s population.
Customers also have the option to buy a wireless Netgear router for £25 and a Mobile Connect USB Modem for £58, which allows them to connect to Vodafone’s 3G data service for a monthly fee of £29, although the amount of data downloaded will be capped.
Vodafone at Home’s launch comes after the announcement from BT that it had connected its 10 millionth DSL customer, and that availability has now reached 99.8 percent of the UK population. Currently, BT’s highest speed connection is 8Mbit/s, but from January 2008 24Mbit/s will be increasingly available.
Industry analysts are predicting that smaller ISPs will not be able to compete with offerings from the big providers such as BSkyB, BT and Virgin Media boasting triple play (voice, video and data) options.
Current Analysis analyst Sandra O’Boyle said, "We are very close to saturation point in broadband and more consolidation is inevitable. For insta nce, it will be interesting to see if the mobile operators make ISP acquisitions e.g. Tiscali or Pipex to boost their broadband customer numbers."
