Mobile broadband bandwagon leaves Sky and TalkTalk trailing

Over recent weeks TalkTalk has been the ISP that has dominated the headlines. And unlike say Virgin Media, whose brushes with the ASA continue to mount up, it’s mostly been for the right reasons. Its offer to waive charges for a six-month period for customers in particular was an inspired piece of pr.

But as bit of canny maths from Top 10 Broadband showed, recently they’ve not always been so quick to react to shifting moods in the UK broadband market. Over the last 12 months, TalkTalk and Sky have been notable absentees from the mobile broadband market. And the site calculates that as a result they are missing out on £36 million of potential revenue every month by failing to do so.

Jessica McArdle, marketing manager at the site, however predicted that it’s only a matter of time before this happens. She said: “TalkTalk and Sky must be looking into ways of offering mobile broadband either as a standalone product or as part of a bundled deal – failing to do so would amount to commercial suicide”

It’s hard to disagree with her. The worry is that in the meantime, rivals such as O2, Vodafone, 3 and Virgin Media are carving the market up for themselves. Thus by the time that TalkTalk and Sky have readied a mobile broadband service, they’ll have to work twice as hard and offer deals three times as eye-catching in order to capture a share of the sector.

Henry Holland and O2 go dutch on dongle

Just after Christmas, we predicted that mobile broadband dongles would follow mobile phones by becoming more of a fashion item than a purely functional device for getting online. We also forecasted that limited edition exclusive dongles would become commonplace, as ISPs look to distinguish themselves from the competition.

Today, we’re awarding ourselves prescience points a-plenty with the news that Henry Holland has designed a dongle for O2, which will be available for a limited time until February 27.

You’ll know said cove from appearances on Channel 4’s fashion programme Frock Me, where he often talks more than a little inanely about matters of the day with his childhood friend Agyness Deyn. Typically they’ll conclude that like the war in Iraq is REALLY BAD.

But judge not before you’ve seen the fruits of his labour:



Admit it, you want one. With any luck though, the House of Holland polka-dot number will be the first of a slew of dongles with eye-catching looks. We’ve already discussed the prospect of Star Wars dongles and how fanboys would snap them up in a trice. So what else is on our wishlist?

I’d like to see a collaboration with Bathing Ape. Imagine some natty camouflage numbers along the lines of Nigo’s work with Pepsi:



Can you picture them? Nice eh? Or better yet how about some designed by Futura 3000 who did the Unkle sleeves? Or even Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz and Tank Girl fame?

March to mobile broadband leaves BT flatfooted

BT it seems is finally waking up to the mobile broadband revolution. According to a report from the Observer, the UK’s largest telecommunications company is considering launching a mobile phone network. The move comes after the firm spectacularly failed to cash in on the mass migration of broadband to mobile devices such as laptops and phones. This, it’s fair to say, hasn’t gone down too well with BT’s shareholders.

And indeed why would it? Latterly, the company has appeared to lurch from one crisis to another. Worse-than-expected profits for the last quarter of 2009 were followed by the announcement of plans to cut costs by shedding thousands of jobs. The misery was compounded last week when the firm announced a second consecutive profit warning, alongside the news that its shares are now trading at near-20-year lows. The blame we were told lies with the global economic downturn since the Great Depression, blah, blah, blah.

But does it, really? Given BT’s failure to capitalise on the exponential growth of mobile broadband, it’s hard to look at chief executive Ian Livingstone’s management and not posit that some of the blame for the company’s shocking performance must lie with him. Not least because over the last 12 months, the number of UK mobile broadband users has grown to 7.3 million. That’s billions of pounds of revenue that has gone to smaller rival providers due to BT’s inertia to reacting to the seismic shift in the market.

In order to remedy their parlous situation, BT is now in talks with T-Mobile and 3 with a view to launching a mobile phone operation. However, by the time that these preliminary negotiations have become something more concrete and the specifics of branding and costs have been hammered out, it’s likely that up to a year will have passed. So that’s another 12 months of potential profit that BT will miss out on.

But if all this just meant a lower dividend for shareholders for a couple of years, it wouldn’t be a problem. After all it’s not really our concern. But alas that’s not the case. As a consequence of this mis-management and lack of market awareness, BT is now threatening to renege on pledges to fund the roll-out of the fibre wire network. The result? The taxpayer could now be forced to shoulder the burden.

Once upon a time thanks in part to its charming and successful ad campaigns, such as those starring kids’ favourite Buzby and Maureen Lipman’s Beattie character, and the bold modernistic architectural style of the BT Tower, BT was seen as a great British institution a few rungs down in our affection from the BBC. However, once we’ve dug into our pocket to bail them out, it’ll be just another struggling company whose financial imprudence we’re irritatingly having to bail out.