2007 has been a turning point for the mobile industry with carriers finally accepting they were not fancy-shamcy media companies but just dumb pipes!

After poor results in mobile TV and the video calling and multimedia messaging flops, mobile operators needed new growth opportunities to cover their 3G license costs. And, as Fred Vogelstein explained in "The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry", the launch of the iPhone in mid-2007 finally triggered this shift by forcing carriers to give more power to manufacturers, developers, producers and consumers.

The result in early 2008 is an intense competition in mobile broadband offers. Keeping your laptop connected wherever your are now starts at £7.50 a month. Even non-geeky newspapers like The Guardian are now helping their readers to find the best deal.

So the time might have come to replace our old ADSL subscriptions by a 3G dongle... and no longer rely on those patchy wifi hotspots!