Apple’s new mobile broadband wundertablet is set to launch in the UK at the end of the week after selling like a beautifully designed, touchscreen hotcake over in the US and with high levels of demand actually forcing its international release to be delayed until now.

The iPad is noteworthy because it will be available with an on-board mobile broadband modem for completely wireless internet access wherever you roam. The base model will lack the 3G feature, sticking with a Wi-Fi connection, but those who spend a little more will have a travel companion that should meet just about any portable internet needs.

The iPad is going to be supported by most of the UK’s mobile broadband providers, with O2, Orange and Vodafone announcing price plans. However, 3 has stepped into the fray with its own wireless broadband prices which undercut most of its rivals and could make it the most desirable network partner for iPad owners here in the UK come Friday.

For £15 a month 3 will give you a data allowance of 10GB, which compares favourably to similarly priced deals from its rivals that only include 5GB or even 3GB of data allowance. 3 has said that it will not be tying its customers into any fixed term contracts with the iPad price plans, as its mobile broadband deals will operate on a rolling 30 day contract which you can opt out of at any time.

People looking for a mobile broadband package to suit their intermittent iPad roaming needs might consider Orange or O2’s daily deals, which will cost you £2 for any day on which you choose to use your mobile broadband connection on your iPad, with data limits of 200MB and 500MB respectively. It should be interesting to see how the iPad’s arrival impacts upon the mobile broadband market and wireless broadband prices.

O2 is looking to reduce the cost of opting for a pay as you go mobile broadband service by cutting the price of the dongle for a limited period.

Until the end of May, customers will be able to sign up with O2 and receive a USB dongle to help them get online using O2’s mobile broadband networks for half of its original price.

The USB dongle was originally £19.99, but from now until May 31st the dongle is just £9.99, giving consumers even more incentive to pick up a mobile broadband package and see how it can work for them, without committing to an extended contractual period.

O2 has extended its pay monthly mobile broadband deals by adding a new laptop computer to its line up of incentives. The Asus UL30A straddles the line between netbook and notebook, with powerful hardware combined with light weight portability.

There is an up-front charge to pay for this cutting edge computer, but for your money you get 3GB of RAM, Windows 7, a large 320GB hard drive and of course O2’s award-winning mobile broadband service. Best of all, this laptop has an integrated mobile broadband modem, so there is no need to cover the cost of a separate USB dongle, or to plug in such a device in order to get online.

O2 is looking to compete directly with Orange mobile broadband free laptop deals and every major mobile broadband provider seems to be constantly refreshing their offers in order to win new customers in a highly competitive marketplace.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard commented “Pay as you go mobile broadband from O2 could be a great way to try out the service, especially as the new dongle offer makes signing up a low risk.”

Mobile broadband provider Orange has given names to its three major mobile broadband price plans in order to bring them in line with the animal-inspired brands of its mobile phone tariffs.

The three new plans have been dubbed Panther, Dolphin and Raccoon, with the intention being that mobile phone customers currently on Orange will have a better idea as to what each package will offer and the wireless broadband prices will echo the mobile tariffs after which they are named.

The cheapest of these new deals is Raccoon, which will cost you £5 a month for a fixed 18 month minimum contract. For your money you will have a 500MB data allowance, which is adequate for modest surfing needs and should be suitable for anyone who requires only sporadic internet access.

The mid-range Panther mobile broadband tariff is also tied to an 18 month minimum contract and it gives you 10GB of data allowance per month for £25 each month. This is for heavier users who might need to send and receive lots of emails, download files and even stream video.

The most comprehensive new tariff from Orange is called Dolphin and with it comes an unlimited data allowance for £35 each month. As with all unlimited plans, there is a fair use policy to adhere to, which ultimately means that you will have over 20GB of data each month and for all intents and purposes is more than enough to meet the needs of the heaviest of single users.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard said “Orange has always been a leader when it comes to wireless broadband prices and mobile broadband innovation and it is now renaming its key tariffs to make the choice even easier. Users who have enjoyed its mobile phone packages should know roughly what to expect and Orange’s unrivalled 3G coverage levels are also an important asset to consider.”

A new study has found that people looking for the best nationwide roaming experience with mobile broadband should opt for T-Mobile.

The marketing of mobile broadband can often obscure how the different providers will be able to perform in the hands of the consumer and so the study took six of the UK’s largest mobile broadband providers on the road to see how well they stack up.

The journey took the Broadband Genie team from Cambridge to Bournemouth by rail and during the trip a variety of data-intensive tasks were carried out using different mobile broadband services.

It was discovered that, in general, there was no single provider that performed notably below the basic expectations of the testers and tasks such as downloading audio tracks and streaming content from the internet were by and large achievable.

Last year during the same study it was discovered that Vodafone was the outright winner, as its mobile broadband service was able to triumph in all of the tests that were thrown at it. This year things were not so good for any one provider, as each failed in at least one category.

The highest overall achiever this year was T-Mobile, whose mobile broadband service hit a maximum download speed of 4.8Mbps after it was clocked downloading a 13MB file in only 22 seconds.

The three slowest mobile broadband providers were Virgin Media, O2 and Orange, with 3 and Vodafone coming closer to matching T-Mobiles winning speeds.

In the last 12 months every major mobile broadband provider has upgraded their free USB dongles, except for O2, which is still using last year’s device.

Simon Gerrard, Simple Broadband’s Communication Manager commented “With wireless broadband prices falling, it is good to see mobile broadband providers keeping up on the technology front.”

The future of mobile broadband is currently being decided for German consumers as four leading mobile network providers have begun the process of bidding for the 4G spectrum.

Ten years ago the German government was able to generate about £44 billion from the sale of the 3G spectrum and this has been key to the growth of mobile broadband for a decade. Now it expects that the 4G auction will also bring in billions, but the final figure could fall short of that achieved by 3G in the year 2000.

Analysts believe that networks will collectively pay up to £10 billion for the rights to own a slice of the 4G spectrum, which will bring mobile broadband speeds ten times faster than the current maximum afforded by 3G.

The German equivalents of O2, Vodafone and T-Mobile will all be playing their part in the 4G spectrum auction. To be pedantic the correct term for this initial spectrum is LTE (Long Term Evolution) which is seen by many as a gateway towards even faster 4G mobile broadband in the future.

Analysts will be using the German auction as an indicator as to how other markets, including the UK, will respond to the 4G revolution and the future of mobile broadband. It is believed that some networks will be more willing to commit to 4G than others and when the spectrum is allocated in the UK, the industry will watch closely to see who comes out on top.

Many observers are predicting that BT could enter the 4G auction in the UK, making it one of the few landline providers to jump on the next-generation mobile broadband wagon.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard commented “The current broadband speeds and deals, including the Orange mobile broadband free laptop offers, will be further improved once 4G and LTE technology comes along, although the providers have a lot to sort out before then.”

Mobile broadband provider Orange has recently announced a new set of packages aimed at business users, with the promise of making work far more flexible in the future.

Orange hopes that organisations and individuals will be better able to cope with a diverse and changing set of business requirements when they pick up a mobile broadband package which has been designed with the needs of an enterprise user in mind.

Orange says that the traditional hours of work are no longer as rigid as they were in the past and it believes that with a business mobile broadband package, staff will be able to adjust their own schedules without having to remain stuck in the office to get the job done.

Orange’s small business director Martin Lyne said that its aim was to reflect the working lives of its customers with the malleability of its business mobile broadband packages.

The new Orange packages offer unlimited use to business customers with a moderate fair use policy to govern the monthly data allocation. It also says that it has made the pricing of its business tariffs clearer.

Mr Lyne said that UK businesses would be presented with a range of mobile broadband options and would have the freedom to choose the package most appropriate to their specific needs.

Orange has been promoting its mobile broadband as a means of allowing workers to make the most out of the good weather when the summer rolls around. It says that using mobile broadband will allow business customers to work from home, or from the local park, rather than having to commute into the office, consequently reducing their carbon footprint.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard added “Orange tells us that 90 per cent of workers commute for more than an hour a day, so with Orange and BT business broadband packages evolving, many of us should be able to benefit from more time working at home”.

Customers looking to get into the mobile broadband market might be interested to learn that Vodafone has slashed the price of its basic mobile broadband package to just £4.25.

This package is intended for business users and for the first three months this low price will apply, before increasing to £12.77 for the remainder of the contract.

Vodafone’s mobile broadband networks can offer download speeds of up to 7.2Mbps and the provider has been shown in recent surveys to offer some of the fastest and most consistent mobile broadband connections in the UK.

The standard business mobile broadband package from Vodafone comes with a 3GB monthly data allowance, which it is suggested will give you about 100 hours of use each month.

Vodafone includes a free USB dongle with this package and there are a host of other freebies to enjoy. You get a software suite to protect your PC or laptop from viruses and hackers and you also gain access to free online backup and data restoration, which means that sensitive files and documents can be copied and protected. Up to 2GB of your data can be stored in this way.

There is a minimum 24 month contract with this new low-cost business mobile broadband deal and it compares favourably to other wireless broadband prices.

If you do not want to commit for the full 24 month period, there is an 18 month option. The initial monthly premium is higher, at £8.50, but after three months it rises to precisely the same level as the 24 month option.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard noted “Mobile broadband can be a real asset for business users, allowing them to get online virtually anywhere and Vodafone is now making it as cost-effective as possible”.

People looking for shorter minimum contract periods in the mobile broadband market will be able to take advantage of a new pay monthly package from Vodafone.

For £15 a month you will get a 3GB data cap and there is a 12 month minimum contract to cover. However, your money also bags you a free USB dongle to help you get online.

Vodafone offers a similar package for people who want a rolling contract similar to a pay-as-you-go scheme. The monthly price and data cap are identical, but with a one month minimum contract you will need to pay £19 for the dongle.

Whether you like the sound of this Vodafone package will depend on how you respond to wireless broadband prices. If you know that you will need the service consistently for at least 12 months, then it is a good deal as you will save the £19 fee for the dongle.

Vodafone has undercut its closest 12 month-offering rival Orange, which has the same data cap and free dongle deal costing £18 monthly. Orange gives you the option to upgrade the USB dongle to a premium edition that comes with a free microSD memory card and the claim of offering a better connection, but you will have to pay £20 for the privilege.

By looking at these latest deals it is easy to see how much mobile broadband prices have fallen over the last year. Data caps have virtually trebled in this lower price bracket and a pay-as-you-go mobile broadband contract is nearly as attractive from a financial point of view as a fixed term option.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard added “Vodafone now offers its users some of the most competitive mobile broadband packages out there, along with fast download speeds.”

The legal wrangling that has afflicted the sale and allocation of the digital spectrum may soon come to an end, with the UK government planning on holding auctions before 2010 is over.

The spectrum that is currently being disputed will eventually provide better mobile broadband availability and speeds for UK customers and it is hoped that the first services using it will be in operation by 2012.

Industry regulator Ofcom and the Department of Business Innovation and Skills ratified plans to sell the spectrum last week, signalling the conclusion of a long period of consultation that began in mid 2009.

Minister Stephen Timms said that the government had ensured that public interests were being protected under the new plans, but also confirmed that the business benefits would be considerable if the plans for the mobile broadband spectrum were instigated.

Mr Timms also said that high speed mobile broadband access would be available to a large proportion of the population as a result of the new plans.

The plans had to undergo some revisions after Orange and T-Mobile finalised a merger deal that was subsequently approved by the EU. The most important change for the networks and the public is the obligatory roll-out of near universal mobile broadband coverage falling at the feet of whichever organisation buys the 800MHz spectrum.

The range that is currently utilised by ageing 2G networking technology will be replaced with 3G and eventually 4G under the new plans and most mobile broadband providers will be able to make substantial improvements to their services as a result.

Experts believe that the auction will take place in early 2011. Simple Broadband’s Simon Gerrard said “The improvements that must now be made to the speed and availability of mobile broadband are exciting for all and incentives such as the Orange mobile broadband free laptop deal could soon be accompanied by tempting 4G options.”

Apple’s iPad is making a big impact in the world of mobile broadband and with its April launch date set, many UK customers will be interested to see whether the new tablet computer will make a difference to the way in which we use the internet whilst we are at home and on the move.

The iPad will initially be available with built in Wi-Fi connectivity, although the major networks are more interested in how it will fare when 3G compatibility arrives with a subsequent release.

With 3G on board, mobile broadband providers will be able to ship the iPad to consumers without the need for a dongle and allow them to connect anywhere that their 3G networks are available.

Apple executives are arriving in the UK to meet with the management teams behind the mobile broadband networks and lengthy talks followed by the possibility of a bidding war for the mobile broadband enabled version are likely to ensue.

There is a chance that wireless broadband prices for the iPad will be a little different than for other mobile broadband offerings.

Firstly it will have to be offered as part of a long term deal in the same way that free laptops are currently bundled with mobile broadband. Secondly, Apple may well demand up to 30 per cent of the revenue that the networks derive from data usage charges, as it currently does this with its iPhone handset.

At the moment there is no news in regard to which mobile broadband providers will actually offer the iPad when it arrives, but all of the major UK networks have expressed interest in the technology.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard said “The iPad will make an interesting alternative to mobile broadband deals which include free laptops, but its impact on wireless broadband prices remains to be seen.”