People in small businesses in IT expecting their mobile internet connection to be akin to that advertised really shouldn't hold their breath, according to one expert.

Commercial director of broadband-expert.co.uk Rob Webber noted that while it's not a surprising thing for him to see given it's the nature of his job, consumers are still getting tricked into certain agreements which don't deliver speeds even close to what's expected.

It follows research released yesterday by the organisation, which found that on average, UK mobile broadband providers are giving just 24 per cent of their advertised speed.

Mr Webber continued: "By marketing the product at, say, 7.2Mb/s, people might then assume that they can cancel their home broadband and get this as a replacement service.

"In the long-run we think that is something that is going to happen, but not yet. Ultimately it is not reliable or fast enough."

He said that whenever a product at above 7Mb/s is delivering only close to 1Mb/s, his company will endeavour to highlight any injustice.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.