Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone Says that 'Mobile Broadband has Peaked'

The CEO of The Carphone Warehouse (and Talk Talk) Charles Dunstone believes that Mobile Broadband 'has peaked' and is being deserted by consumers. Speaking to The Guardian he said that:

"We get a sense that the mobile broadband thing has peaked. We are seeing some of those people begin to realise that the bandwidth you get on mobile is so much less than you get on a fixed line. Mobile broadband is increasingly a supplementary rather than a substitutional thing, and an increasing proportion of Carphone sales are of pre-pay dongles."

I was amazed to read this particularly after a report released earlier in the week stated that mobile connections are set to overtake fixed line subscriptions by the end of the year. As I mentioned on Twitter Mobile Broadband take up has doubled in the past year alone which makes Dunstone's comments seem at best misinformed.

He makes a good point about a lot of mobile dongle sales being to fixed line customers but the suggestion that mobile broadband has peaked seems way off. Those of us who have grown up with mobile phones see little point in having a landline and if mobile broadband speeds increase it could do serious damage to sales of traditional broadband subscriptions.

Some of the networks are clearly struggling to cope with infrastructure not yet ready for so many connections and will be forced to improve. The pay as you go mobile broadband market is very competitive so whom ever can offer their customers the best speeds and most reliable connection is set to do well.

I would be very interested to see any statistics Mr Dunstone can provide to back up his argument. As ISP Review says "every other piece of research we've seen has appeared to communicate the opposite conclusion."

Broadband Increasingly Popular in Rural Wales

Ofcom's recent survey showed that broadband take up has continued to increase despite the recession. Connections are up 10% from last year with around 68% of households being online and 1 in 10 having a mobile broadband contract. The stats for Wales show an even bigger increase in connections with 30% more households getting online within the past 12 months.

Those in rural Wales are slightly more keen with 60% having a broadband connection compared to 58% of city dwellers. This goes to show that broadband coverage is perhaps more wide ranging than previously thought. Ofcom's coverage maps would seem to suggest that most of rural Wales is not covered by a 3G signal from any of the main providers. Despite this 11% of the Welsh population are using mobile broadband including those outside of the main urban areas.

One in five intend to get online within the next six months.

Further to news that cheap offers are increasing mobile broadband takeup it has been revealed that most of those not currently online plan to get connected within the next 6 months. This represents a major opportunity for mobile broadband providers as these potential customers will not yet have an allegiance to any particular company.

These new consumers will have to decide if they want to get fixed line broadband access or pay as you go mobile broadband. Those who own a house a already rent a phone line will tend to pick the fixed line option whilst younger consumers who use mobile phones and rent their accommodation or are at University often go for mobile broadband. The choice is confused further by offers of free laptops with some of the best mobile broadband set ups.

Ofcom has recently publish some surprising stats which show that a significant proportion of those who are currently offline intend to remain so:

"43% of adults who currently do not have internet access would remain disconnected even if they were given a free PC and broadband connection."

These two stats (both produced by Ofcom) seem to contradict each other so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next 12 months.