Orange UK have revealed that dongle subscriptions ahve risen 504% over the last year, a phenomenal statstic, which ties in with recent figures showing that data accounts for 25% of Orange’s revenue. Leading the upsurge in data usage music and video saw an all time high on the Orange network between December last year and February this year. Social networking has also being doing its bit to boost the numbers with page impressions up 129% and monthly users up by 48%. Orange are attributing the increase in data usage to new tariffs and new technologies, with embedded laptops seen as a way to boost the numbers even further.

With he increase in data usage the number of 3G subscribers climbed 82% on the Orange network for a total of 3.8 million. This will be welcome news for Orange, and mobile networks in egenral, who have seen their very expensive 3G networks largely underused until now.