Is Broadband Britain set for 'mobile' shake-up?

Britain's broadband providers are moving away from the fixed-price, high-speed services that have been available to many for the last few years, and towards a 'pay as you go' market.

Until now, metered broadband has been a niche product that was only offered by a couple of players. But BT is radically changing the way that it sells wholesale broadband to ISPs, making it much easier for ISPs to create products where consumers are billed for the amount of bandwidth they consume.

This is expected to prompt a rush of products launches over the next few months, including new entry-level services, as ISPs try and turn broadband into a more mass-market product.

Two ISPs, PlusNet and Eclipse Internet, announced metered products this week.

PlusNet's Broadband Home service lets customers download up to one gigabyte of data for £14.99 per month. Every additional gigabyte of data downloaded will cost an extra £1.50. Uncapped broadband products cost between £20 and £30 per month at present, so this package could appeal to users who want a fast connection that doesn't tie up their phone line, but who aren't likely to be online for several hours per day.

Eclipse has launched a product called FLEX broadband that will let users buy a broadband connection of a certain speed and then raise this speed for a short time when needed. For example, a customer with a 256Kbps link will be able to quadruple this speed for one hour at a cost of 14p. This could be useful when a user needs to access a large patch or the latest Windows Update.

Many more ISPs are understood to be developing similar products. BT claims that its new capacity and usage charging is giving ISPs "flexibility to innovate and differentiate" themselves, making them more attractive to potential customers.

Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet UK