Broadband News

Ericsson trials 84Mb mobile broadband

Thursday, 11 February 2010

By Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

New high-speed mobile broadband is being trialled by Ericsson, offering speeds of up to 84Mb.

The superfast HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology will be showcased by the telecoms hardware developer at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

Marie Westrin, head of radio development at Ericsson, said: "Our driving force is to fulfil consumers' need to social networking, online gaming and video conferencing, just to mention a few services, on the move."

In January, 3 Mobile Broadband (www.Three.co.uk) announced that it would be using Ericsson to deliver its own 84Mb mobile broadband in Scandinavia, due to be rolled out across Denmark and four major Swedish cities in 2011.

However, Ericsson did add that “Actual customer download speeds are less and can vary due to congestion, distance from the base station, local conditions, hardware, software and other factors”.

At the end of 2009, O2 Mobile Broadband (www.O2.co.uk) trialled 4G mobile broadband technology known as Long Term Evolution (LTE), achieving a massive 150Mb download speed. When tested in a real-world situation on a multiplayer PlayStation 3 console this was cut down to 8Mb - though still far higher than today’s often disappointing speeds.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “Although many people are still dissatisfied with their sluggish mobile broadband speeds, which averaged only 1.1Mb in 2009, things are definitely going to improve in the mobile broadband market with the advent of next-generation HSPA and even faster 4G LTE technology.”

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