Cheapest Mid-Band?

ILA

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could suggest the cheapest provider of mid-band internet (with USB dongle) for personal use?

Preferably I'm looking for a provider with free/cheapest dongle and then maybe 10 EUR per month for the actual internet usage.

Thanks!

jor el

They all charge the same price. There's only four operators anyway, so not like it's going to be that difficult to check them out.

Basing this decision on price is the wrong move anyway. No point in getting it cheap if it doesn't work.

watty

And it's all sold WAY below cost, so expect prices to rise steep.

rebel.ranter

watty wrote: »

so expect prices to rise steep.

I would disagree with this comment. I think that operators will not be able to increase the price for the service offered. My opinion in this would be that if you are paying €20 a month for a "best effort" service this option will always remain & at the roughly the same price point. The way the operators will be able to extract more revenue is by providing different levels of service in exchange for a higher monthly payment. Don't tell me that they cannot differentiate different levels of service because they can & will. There is also the option of selling increased caps at higher price points too.

The simple fact of the matter is the €20 a month (or whatever figure) is what the consumer is willing to pay, that's it. No point in trying to sell something at a higher cost if nobody wants to buy it. If someone was worried about the "prices to rise steep" then there will always be an out clause in the contract to allow the customer leave if the condition change, so why should the OP worry about what might happen in the future?

There's no evidence to suggest that costs will rise, the telecomms industry are different to all the other service industries, you expect your ESB/Gas bill to go up but you also expect to get more for your money from your telecomms operator (fixed or mobile). Costs have consistently come down over the years. Of course they were riding the consumer for most part but even still the costs are going down not up. That's what people expect. I liken it to the memory stick, you can pick up a 16GB memory stick for ~€20 at the minute, give it a year or two & people would expect that the same memory stick to be half the price.

On the point of selling WAY below cost, this is not strictly true either. The payback can be calculated & any investment in infrastructure can be analysed for potential revenue before anything is put on the ground. I would say that on an overall basis a 3G network right now has an "x" no. of years payback figure calculated.

Sometimes businesses have to suffer in the short term losses to make long term gains. Ever bought below cost beer in Dunnes or Tescos?

There are thoughts out there that 3G networks will die off before 2G but the ground work that 3G will have established for operators for their next evolution, be it LTE WiMax or other technology. So from that point of view you could look at it as an even longer term investment.

Mobile phone networks are morphing to have IP based backhaul networks so in the medium term they will be well positioned to provide what you would accept as a data network. What happens at the access nodes still may not be pleasing to you just yet but over time the modified mobile phone network taking data will be a thing of the past.

Yes it's probably true that operators are using revenue from their 2G network to fund the building of these networks but what's the difference where it is funded from? Banks v revenue/income, surely it would be wiser avoid borrowing?

William Powell

rebel.ranter wrote: »

... a "best effort" service ...

Never heard it called that before but its certainly a good description

Now if only the Mid-Band providers had this written in large freindly letters on their advertising, then there'd be a few less disapointed users expecting Mobile Broadband to be a fixed line Broadband replacement.

rebel.ranter

Call it what it is, I agree.