Mobile broadband

Mobile broadband: how fast is it really?

Wednesday 1 June, 2011

By Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

Mobile broadband lets you take the internet with you wherever you go - but how much can you really do with a dongle?

Although speed tests carried out by telecoms regulator Ofcom showed an average mobile broadband speed of 1.5Mb, the quality of your connection depends on a number of different factors.

And because mobile broadband is exactly that - mobile - your speeds and coverage will vary depending on where you are in the UK; cities and towns usually have faster connections, while rural areas tend to be patchy.

Mobile broadband speeds

Between September and December last year, the telecoms regulator ran over 4.2 million mobile broadband speed tests and found that speeds averaged 1.5Mb. A basic webpage would take around 8.5 seconds to download at this speed, it said.

This compares to an average of 6.2Mb for fixed-line broadband, which Ofcom tested in November and December 2010.

In “good 3G areas” average speeds grew to 2.1Mb with a dip to 1.7Mb at peak times. However, the regulator added: “Despite the potential for good mobile broadband speeds in the urban city locations covered, the measured performance was highly variable across the city, with no guarantee of good performance offered by a city centre location.”

Half of connections tested in rural areas delivered a speed of less than 0.5Mb - compared to 25% of connections in cities.

Overall, O2 (www.O2.co.uk) delivered the fastest speeds according to the Ofcom research, followed by Vodafone (www.Vodafone.co.uk) and Three, while T-Mobile (www.T-Mobile.co.uk) and Orange mobile broadband (www.Orange.co.uk) proved slowest.

Getting the best connection

The main thing that will affect your mobile broadband connection is coverage, “and consumers should check with their provider how good the coverage is likely to be before buying a service,” advised Ofcom.

It also advised that you think about how you want to use your connection before you sign-up as mobile broadband isn’t really suitable for heavy downloading or online gaming, for example.

Try a pay-as-you-go or rolling one-month contract if you want to test out the service before you commit.

The future of mobile broadband

Mobile broadband speeds are set to get faster though. Ofcom will be auctioning off the 4G spectrum, which is being freed up by the switch from analogue to digital TV, in early 2012.

“Mobile broadband performance is likely to remain significantly below fixed broadband performance until the rollout of additional spectrum for mobile services in the UK, which is expected to begin in 2013,” said Ofcom.

BT has already joined forces with Orange and T-Mobile, under the Everything Everywhere brand, to run a trial of the faster 4G connections in rural Cornwall.

As well as allowing more data to travel across networks, 4G will offer consumers potential speeds of up to 100Mb broadband.