Most UK customers are unlikely to ditch their home broadband connections for mobile broadband contracts any time soon, one industry commentator has suggested.

Tom Newton of Broadband Finder has explained that before British web surfers swap fixed-line for 3G broadband, speeds must increase on the mobile networks.

Mr Newton was speaking in response to figures from Analysys Mason which estimate that there will be 148 million mobile broadband connections in Europe by 2014.

He commented: "Customers are more likely to adopt mobile broadband services as a complement to fixed-line connections and not a replacement.

"The speeds and data rates currently available on today's mobile broadband packages can't begin to compete with the level of service available on a fixed-line connection."

Mr Newton quoted speed test results which show that the average download speed for mobile broadband is 1.46Mb, compared to 3.31Mb for fixed-line downloads.