Mobile broadband speeds come up short
- Tue, 22 Sep 2009
- Comments (1)
Mobile broadband customers are not getting anything like the speeds promised in advertising, a study has claimed.
In fact, the average speed achieved is just one quarter of the average top speed promised by providers in their promotional material.
Broadband Expert tested 3,342 mobile broadband connections between March and August 2009 and found that the average actual download speed was 1.1Mbps compared to the average advertised maximum speed of 4.5Mbps.
"It is completely unreasonable for a provider to advertise unrealistically high speeds that the vast majority of customers will never receive," said Rob Webber, commercial director at Broadband Expert.
"Advertising in this way will not help the long-term growth of mobile broadband or the reputation of the providers if customers feel they are being misled," Webber continued.
Vodafone recently deployed technology which it said was able to provide mobile broadband access at a "theoretical" rate of 14.4Mbps but admitted that customers would not be able to get these speeds in practice.
However, Vodafone actually comes out worst of the five mobile broadband providers tested, offering real speeds which are only 18 per cent of the advertised maximum speed.
Three offered speeds of 33 per cent of the maximums advertised, better than all of the other providers.
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Comments
Latest comments
September 22 16:23
Gerry Mulvenna, movingWiFi.com
Apart from the issue of poor connection speeds on mobile broadband, I think there are two other quality issues which should be highlighted, namely: private IP addresses and image compression.
Most UK mobile broadband operators use NAT to preserve their IP address space thereby providing a private IP address which has limitations for some of the more advanced uses of an internet connection (e.g. gaming and port redirection of inbound data).
Many UK operators still continue the baffling practice of compressing images on webpages - a practice with its origins in mobile internet for small mobile phone screens, but with no rationale for users of USB modems.
Contrast these practices with those in operation in the Republic of Ireland. Irish USB modem users generally get public IP addresses and the images on the websites they view are not tampered with. Connection speeds are comparable with those in the UK, but Pay As You Go dongles are practically unknown.