Sales of pre-pay dongles have rocketed to 8,000 per week in the UK, according to figures from retail analyst GfK.

Priced at around £50, pre-pay dongles are increasingly seen as a flexible way of getting broadband access on the go when used in conjunction with a notebook.

The GfK figures represent an eight-fold increase on to six months ago when just 1,000 per week were being sold.

However, it is contract-based mobile broadband packages that currently make up the vast majority of dongle sales, accounting for 22,000 of the weekly 30,000 units sold each week in the UK.

The rapid growth in the popularity of mobile broadband follows aggressive price cutting by mobile phone networks in the UK.

Last month Vodafone cut the price of its mobile broadband USB modems by £50 for users on 30-day contracts, following a similar move by mobile operator 3 in May.

Vodafone slashed the price of its broadband-on-the-move modem stick from £99 to £49 for 30-day contract users who pay £20 a month for 3GB of usage.