Mobile broadband isn’t just about phones any more. It is also about making a computer mobile with a broadband connection. Many companies are coming out with small USB port broadband hook-ups. These little devices are the same size as your USB memory card. They plug in the same way and you are magically on the internet. Vodafone and several other mobile phone companies are behind the release of these products for computers.
How fast can mobile broadband work? Well many companies are trying to increase the speeds even as this article is written, but at the moment places like Vodafone are advertising 7.2 Mbps for speed. The facts are a little less happy though. With mobile broadband most consumers are lucky to get 1 to 2 Mbps with the 7.2 USB mobile broadband device.
The top speed can be ascertained in bursts, but it will rarely stay that high. The question now is why? Other companies are advertising the same speeds and are only getting between 1 and 5 Mbps as well. So it is not just one brand of devices.
Mobile broadband is a satellite connection in which the signal must bounce from a tower to the signal coming from the company. With broadband internet the consumer is on a network. The network has a specific amount of consumers on just that one. Since you can travel you are using different towers each time. This means that the more individuals using the tower to get a signal the slower the internet connection will be. The mobile broadband is offering a certain allotment of use for each consumer. The more consumers on at the same time, the slower the speeds will be.
This is why the speed is really around the 1 to 5 Mbps rather than the advertised 7.2 Mbps. As the technology increases for mobile broadband consumers might yet see the speeds, but that has yet to happen.
Along with mobile broadband speed test are the pages the consumers are trying to download. Many of the pages have yet to switch to a mobile broadband URL. In other words the pages are still written for the regular internet connection. This means the size of the downloaded page is set for the computer which has a larger downloading capacity and therefore increased speed. For the mobile broadband the larger the file the less speed you will have in downloading that particular page.
To increase speed when using a phone you need the now mobile broadband page. For computers you are going to be using the same downloads as your line connection. This means that you will be slow on the mobile broadband, especially at certain times in the day. To combat this, the only thing to do is get online when the rest of the UK is asleep. The pre supper hour tends to have more consumers online with internet and mobile broadband than any other time, which means you can expect slowdowns at this time more so than any other.