By Kathy Sandler Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Mobile broadband has been the most significant change in the mobile landscape in the past year, and is set to become a significant revenue stream for network operators in the U.K., according to U.K. communications regulator Ofcom. In its annual Communications Market report, Ofcom confirmed what the mobile operators have been flagging for the past eight months: that the dongle, or 3G mobile USB modem, has become a significant driver of new sales just as the voice and text market looks set to flatten in a saturated market. The relative infancy of the market makes recent data hard to come by, but Ofcom reports that in the five months to June, 2008, 510,000 mobile broadband connections were sold by the five mobile network operators in the U.K. Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.'s (HUWHY) 3 network more recently put a figure of over half a million on the number of total dongles it has sold to date, accounting for around 16% of its total subscriber base. Vodafone Group PLC (VOD.LN) reported sales of 3.2 million PC connectivity cards across Europe by the end of June. While the company doesn't split out regional sales, market sources put U.K. mobile broadband sales to date at close to half a million as well. Deutsche Telekom AG's (DT) T-Mobile has made a concerted push into mobile broadband in the past few months, and reported that its share of total dongle sales in June was around 27%, citing data provided by research firm GfK. Telefonica SA's (TEF) O2 network offers mobile broadband to its customers from GBP20 per month while France Telecom SA's (FTE) Orange offers an 18-month contract for GBP15 per month. Neither company was able to provide figures for the number of dongles sold or their market share. Over 80% of dongle sales cited by Ofcom in the five months to June were on a contract basis, with typical contracts worth around GBP10 to GBP20 per month, about half the amount mobile operators get from their handset contract customers. While the growth in mobile broadband has been meteoric, it is still dwarfed by current voice and text revenue, and has some way to go to make a significant impact on mobile operator sales. Ofcom projects that if 3 million people in the U.K. took up mobile broadband in the next few years, it could generate around GBP540 million for the mobile industry, or around 3.5% of 2007 revenue. Company Web site: www.ofcom.org.uk -By Kathy Sandler, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-207-842-9293; kathy.sandler@dowjones.com Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/al?rnd=0%2FrQL3N4W%2FiSVov66NFA3w%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
