Even with its increasing popularity due to its convenience, competitive pricing and free laptop options, UK mobile broadband still faces tough competition from its fixed line counterpart. It has been suggested by industry experts that even with the current growth, many consumers are selecting a fixed line option over the portable Internet alternative.

This is put down to the fact that even with increased performance and some very good average speeds, landline Internet connections still provide faster download and upload speeds. Fixed line connections can offer double the speeds available on USB Internet on average.

Even so, portable Internet is exceedingly useful as a backup in case problems occur with the main connection or if access to the Internet is wanted when on the move. Because of this, it has been suggested that operators may being to offer best mobile broadband connections alongside their landline options as part of a bundle.

There is a case for having a complementary portable Internet connection alongside a fixed connection. There are big leaps in speeds that are provided by the fixed line service providers with Virgin offering speeds of up to 50Mbps. Even so, there have been many announcements about potential upgrades of portable Internet connections to speeds of over 20Mbps.