Optus rival Telstra has also identified mobile broadband as a market hot spot with Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo, claiming it was at the centre of the telco's growth last year.

"Mobile broadband has been a huge success with more than 300,000 wireless card users generating ARPUs in excess of $100," he said. "Let me put this in context - 300,000. That compares to the reported numbers of Vodafone with a 60 million customer base who reported 500,000 data cards in a 60 million base.

"We have an 8.5 million customer base and we've already sold 300,000. Our average revenue per user on our data cards is $100.

"So it's a very attractive proposition that we have now, differentiated versus our competitors because of our network speeds and our coverage and the services to go with it."