Just a few weeks after the arrival of Virgin’s mobile broadband service, Trusted Reviews have announced that Virgin will be offering discounts when you take mobile broadband with a fixed line broadband subscription.  From next Monday, Virgin broadband subscribers with XL, L or ADSL 1 packages will be able to add mobile broadband from as little as £5 per month.  Customers with M or ADSL 2 can pick up mobile broadband for £10.  Customers will only have to sign up for a 12 month contract – bucking a trend when the best value deals are only available to customers who sign up for longer contracts.

Virgin are joining O2 and BT by bundling mobile broadband with fixed line services.  It’s likely that we’ll see more offerings like this in the future for a couple of reasons:

• For fixed line operators, it offers a way to differentiate from their competitors.  Although it’s unlikely that Virgin will make much, if any margin on the mobile broadband component, they’re benefiting as customers are less likely to leave Virgin if they have a number of services, plus it’s a great way to differentiate and switch customers from their competitors.
• For mobile operators, such as O2, by combining fixed and mobile broadband they’re driving down their operating costs.  This is due to the fact it’s significantly cheaper to carry data over fixed line that it is over the mobile network.  The majority of data usage is likely to be at home – how many people use BitTorrents in Starbucks? – therefore the data hungry applications will be served by the fixed line network, saving precious capacity on the mobile network.  And boy, don’t O2 need that.