SAY MOBILE broadband, and the image that comes to mind is usually of someone surfing the Net on his mobile phone.
But that's not how most people get onto the e-highway while they are on the road.
"Surfing on cell phones is not as popular here," said Kenneth Liew, senior market analyst of telco research at research firm IDC.
"Only the more savvy users use their cell phones to go online, because it is still not as easy to surf the Net on a phone as it is on a computer."
Instead, more people are browsing the Web and connecting to their digital inboxes on their laptops than on their mobile phones.
The beauty of mobile broadband is untethered surfing while you are out and about. Unlike Wi-Fi, which usually serves a limited area - and you have to go to a hotspot - mobile broadband allows folks to hop on and stay on the Net even while they are driving or riding on an MRT train.
Which could be a reason more subscribers are tagging their mobile broadband services onto pure data SIM cards, even though these pure data cards cannot be used to make calls like the usual voice-and-data SIM cards can.
These subscribers, say telcos here, make up a growing number of people who are using mobile broadband, or broadband via the 3G mobile phone network, here in Singapore.
It's the same technology that allows people to connect to the Internet via their mobile phone.
With a plug-in-and-go modem that fits a 3G SIM card, the same traipse-about and surf-the-Net freedom can be extended to laptops.
The service was launched by M1 at the end of 2006. Since then, the telco has signed up more than 84,000 mobile broadband users. In the process, it has also boosted its data-related revenue (excluding SMSes) from 7 per cent in the second quarter of last year to 9 per cent in the same period this year.
As of the end of March, SingTel's average data revenue per user was 5 per cent more compared to last year.
For StarHub, data traffic was boosted to new highs in the first half of this year, growing more than 100-fold compared to the same period in 2007.
Apart from busy Netizens on the go, mobile broadband is catching on with the stay-home crowd.
Prices, from as low as $19.36 a month for unlimited surfing at speeds of 2Mbps, have nudged some into switching from a pure home-based broadband plan.
"It's getting popular among light users, such as people who don't surf the Net often, or who only browse websites and send e-mail," said Kenneth.
Ditto for small and medium businesses which are turning to the service to save cost: Company executives can subscribe to mobile broadband services as individuals, then use it anywhere.
To accommodate the growing number of users, the three telcos here have also announced upgrades to their HSPA (high-speed packet access) networks, that will eventually zip at speeds of up to 21Mbps for StarHub's and 14.4 Mbps for SingTel's and M1's. But some, especially those accustomed to high-speed connections, remain unswayed.
Of this group, IDC's Kenneth said: "It's not feasible for downloading music and movies, and even for streaming, especially on the cheaper plans, which offer slower speeds."
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 13 August 2008.
