Pollsters at YouGov have predicted that it will only take 24 months for 'Mobile Broadband' (3G / 4G) services to dominate the broadband market and overtake land-line rivals (e.g. ADSL, cable etc.)! The study found that 1 in 10 people now use Mobile Broadband connections to go online, which is stunning for a product that barely even existed 12 months ago.

YouGov expects that such services will be able to capitalise on the slow development of Next Generation Access (NGA) fibre broadband solutions, potentially causing huge problems for established land-line ISPs in the UK.

However, what is not so clear is how such products are being used. We know that many people use Wi-Fi Hotspots as a complement to their home/business connections and it is likely that 'Mobile Broadband' will take a similar role, at least in the short term.

Future Mobile Broadband technologies promise far faster speeds (LTE, Mobile WiMAX), although it will take some time for those to develop and existing services are still comparably slow, albeit not by much. Likewise most mobile operators do not offer true ISP style value added services (e-mail), have more restrictive usage allowances, don't work well when deep inside a building and often block or restrict access to other services.

Suffice to say, there are still many areas that mobile connections will need to improve upon before they can truly replace land-line rivals. However, UK ISP's can still expect to come under increasing pressure from a totally new market where their ability to compete is extremely limited.