For many self-employed professionals or small businesses, the dilemma isn't whether to plump for ADSL or mobile broadband, but whether they can afford to do without either. It would be enormously brave for any business - especially an internet-facing one - to entrust their sole internet connection to 3G. But it's the perfect complement to ADSL for businesses that routinely have people working from home or out of the office.
"Previously, travellers had a [Wi-Fi] hotspot subscription," said Andrew Ferguson, editor of Thinkbroadband.com. "Now it's a case of you park up and go online wherever you need to."
While today's smartphones are more than capable of handling remote email, Ferguson argues that mobile broadband has made it far easier to run other business-critical apps on the road. "If you've got corporate applications - software that's running across a VPN - then you're going to be looking more towards mobile broadband," he said.
The vast majority of the mobile broadband services will allow you to access your company's VPN, and some - such as Vodafone's Mobile Connect software - come with a VPN client. However, check whether your particular network and price plan are VPN-compatible before buying: T-Mobile, for example, permits VPN access on pay monthly contracts, but not on pay-as-you-go plans. Other networks require you to configure your mobile broadband software to use a particular access point name (APN) - a call to customer services is normally all that's required to get the correct APN.
ISPs are now beginning to bundle mobile broadband services with fixed-line ADSL connections. BT, for example, provides new or renewing Business Total Broadband customers with one "free" mobile broadband account. Virgin Media and Orange also offer mobile broadband bundles, but only on their home products - which might be acceptable for homeworkers, but isn't really an option for dedicated business lines.
The beauty of the self-installing mobile broadband dongles is that small businesses can pass them around the office. A small team of estate agents could share a single dongle, for example, so they could show clients particulars of potential houses while out on visits.
There's one potential pitfall to using the same dongle in multiple laptops, however: keeping track of your data usage. While the client software that comes with all the mobile dongles will count the total data downloaded over a month on that particular machine, most providers don't offer a way of keeping tabs on the amount of data downloaded over the connection as a whole. An honourable exception is 3, which allows users to register with an online usage checker. On other networks, businesses will either need to keep a rough manual tally across all the different machines, or restrict the use of the dongle to a single laptop, if they want to avoid creeping over the cap.
"With some of them, if you go over the usage limit, you're going to start racking up the costs," warned Ferguson. O2, for example, will charge customers 20p for every megabyte they creep over their cap, while BT issues a 10p penalty for every megabyte over the mark - that's roughly £200 and £100 per extra gigabyte respectively. And they say the days of rip-off data charges are over.
Using your mobile broadband stick abroad can also be costly. Charges range from the reasonable to the downright outrageous - even on the same network. Use your mobile broadband in one of the countries on Vodafone's "Connect Abroad" list and you'll be charged a modest £10 per day. If your destination isn't on that list, you're staring down the barrel of £5 per megabyte, which is ludicrous.
Wi-Fi accessOne easy way to avoid being stung on those excess data charges is to pick a mobile broadband provider that offers Wi-Fi access as part of the deal. BT might bundle only a miserly gigabyte of 3G data with its Total Broadband package, but it also throws in 2,000 minutes on its Openzone Wi-Fi network. This includes not only BT's own hotspots - which are frequently found at major railway stations and airports - but any of the BT FON hotspots that are operated by thousands of BT customers across the country. T-Mobile and O2 also provide Wi-Fi access as part of their mobile broadband tariffs. The networks often have roaming deals with foreign hotspot providers, which might help avoid those punitive foreign 3G rates.
If there's no Wi-Fi hotspot available, businesses can always create their own with the new mobile broadband routers. These highly-portable Wi-Fi routers are ideal for off-site meetings or visits to clients, where there's no guarantee that you'll have access to an internet connection. You can plug in your dongle and share the 3G connection with colleagues, allowing you to download presentations on-site, check email or even access the corporate network via a VPN.
One little-known feature offered by most of the mobile broadband providers, which could be particularly useful for businesses, is SMS text messages. The client software that comes with the dongles allows you to send and receive messages from the computer. Some tariffs include a set amount of free text messages, but most charge per message sent.
Is there anything professionals can't do on 3G that they could on ADSL? VoIP services, such as Skype, are actively outlawed by providers such as Virgin Mobile and O2, which are obviously keen to protect their call revenues. Others such as T-Mobile and especially 3 actively encourage customers to use VoIP. Again, check the terms and conditions rigorously if VoIP is critical to your business.
Image compression is another problem that could hamper professionals, particularly those in the creative or web design industries. Virtually all of the networks - again, with the exception of 3 - compress website image quality to preserve bandwidth and to maintain the impression of true ADSL-like speeds. Vodafone allows you to turn off the compression with its Mobile Connect software; T-Mobile offers a separate downloadable app that can adjust the level of compression; others, such as BT and O2, don't provide any means to switch it off.
While the blurry images probably won't affect the majority of business customers, photographers who need to check the quality of images, or website developers, will almost certainly want to see the maximum resolution, even if it takes a little longer to arrive.
Best broadband deal: BT Total Business Broadband offers an 8Mbits/sec ADSL connection with unlimited downloads and a "free" mobile broadband connection with 1GB of 3G data and 2,000 minutes of Wi-Fi for £26.99 a month, on a two-year contact. If you want to keep ADSL and mobile separate, Zen Internet's 8000 Pro (£29.78 exc VAT) plus Vodafone's £15 deal for 3GB of data is a reliable combination.
Broadband: Fixed vs broadbandAuthor: Barry Collins
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