By: MarkJ - 30 March, 2009 (8:00 AM) - Score: 7708 - Mobile Broadband

The head of Mobile Internet and Entertainment at T-Mobile UK, Richard Warmsley, has hinted that the operator will soon begin offering a new range of Pay Per Use (PPU) style Mobile Broadband packages. Unlike Pay As You Go (PAYG), PPU solutions allow customers to purchase their USB Modem (Dongle) and pay for usage as and when they need it. By comparison usage on PAYG packages will usually expire after a given period of time (e.g. 1 month etc.).

Presently Vodafone is one of the only UK mobile operators to promote such a service with their TopUp and Go range; this bundles a USB Modem with 1GB of usage (doesn't expire until you've used it) for a single one-off fee of £39. However the charge for an extra 1GB of data is typically quite steep at £15, though the flexibility this brings often outways the cost:


T-Mobile is understood to be planning a mix of day/week and month PPU packages and is also investigating new Mobile Broadband data bundles for mobile phone users, which would most likely be charge by "minutes" of usage instead of quantity (GigaByte's).

It's not clear whether the new PPU services will retain T-Mobile's flexible Fair Usage Policy (FUP), which does not charge customers for exceeding their data allowance (but does slow your service down). Typically such an option might conflict with a no-contract PPU service and they wouldn't want users having free access to their data services.

No further details have been released, although we suspect that such a move would put pressure on Vodafone to lower its top-up charges because T-Mobile is usually cheaper.