Orange has revamped its mobile broadband packages and brought in the animal branding that its phone service customers will already be familiar with.

At the top end of the scale the Panther package will cost you £25 per month on a rolling deal that gives you 10GB of data. If you sign up for Panther for 18 months, you pay £35 per month but you get unlimited data. Well, they say unlimited, but by now you should all be aware of the much derived fair usage policy. Best panther ever? Easy, Panthro in Thundercats.

Mid range, you've got your Dolphin deals with their happy hour (8-9am, 12-1pm, 4-5pm, or 10-11pm) and an additional 2GB on the monthly deal or 3GB on the 18-month one. Best dolphin ever? Ecco (sorry Flipper).

At the bottom are the Racoon deals that will appeal to lighter mobile broadband users. For £10, you get 1GB of data on the monthly agreement and, if you're an Orange mobile user, for just £5 you can get 500MB on the 18-month deal. Best racoon ever? Melissa from The Racoons. Sure, Bert was cool, but Melissa was a published photographer.

These plans are also available with an Asus Eee PC 1005HGO or HP's Compaq CQ61 on 2-year plans. You have to pay an extra £15-20 per month though.

Dongle-wise you've got a choice of Huawei's E1752 or Option's 515M. The cost ranges from free on the E1752 to £49.99 for the 515M, but this all depends on what package you go for. For a full breakdown see the Orange website.

When asked if there was still a big demand for mobile broadband as more people are carrying around smartphones, an Orange spokesperson stated that they had a 122% rise in the number of dongle subscriptions last year and said "whilst dongles and smartphones provide customers with a data experience on the go, they both have different product benefits, experiences and usage requirements which continue to remain extremely popular". 

What do you guys think? Do you use mobile broadband or a smartphone? Or both? Let us know.