Wireless Broadband– the Pipe that Keeps on Growing
There is little question that wireless broadband is growing at a near frantic rate. Mobile professionals have come to rely on wireless broadband to get their work done, no matter where they roam. Consumers are picking it up in large numbers too, and that has resulted in huge growth globally. GigaOM has a thorough look at the wireless broadband global market, and it is huge and getting bigger all the time.
How big is mobile broadband? How about 250 million subscribers by the end of this year? That is a giant pipe of mobile connectivity, and it’s comprised of all the various network technologies in play. HSPA is ruling the mobile roost with an estimated 150 million connections by the end of this summer. That makes sense as HSPA is the 3G technology of choice in most countries outside the US, but even the US is getting on the HSPA bandwidth bandwagon.
So how about you? Are you enjoying mobile broadband, or do you plan to do so soon? How do you envision it making an impact on your life, both personal and professional?
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What does committed means? (The Yellow in Maps)
Cause I live in Kuwait and we have 3 hspda providers and it is very widely spread in here!
I personally use a broadband service instead of the dsl at home. I find it more flexible and I can take it with me if I am not home. Why to pay for two contracts!
However, it is still VERY expensive in here. You need to pay around $80 dollars monthly for 7MB download speed and you never ever get close to the 7MB. When I am lucky I get around 1.5MB but it is progressing slowly.
Yep, living in pretty remote Australia, and we ditched our 5mb Satellite broadband for Telstra’s 7.2mb HSDPA Next G network. Pretty cool – living ~40km from the nearest 3G cell and speeds and service are fine!
Got a 3G Modem/Router/WiFi access point all in one, so my setup also suits all my needs.
3G > Landline.
Use it a quite a lot but the only problem is the dongle gets to hot.
Well, despite the Czech Republic is red in the map (IN SERVICE), we only have very small coverage in parts of the capital city and parts of several other cities; 3G network is only built by one mobile operator of three (!) and it is always more or less the centre and spots here and there… so I consider Czech Republic not covered at all. Sad but true.
I live in the US but a couple of times go home to the UK to visit my family. My parents don’t have any Internet connection, and no prospect of getting one as they are not computer literate. On a trip home a couple of years ago I was blown away by the sheer explosion of mobile broadband options in the UK – all of the major 5 GSM/UMTS carriers in the UK have a mobile broadband USB-dongle option, and particularly on my last trip home (last week) I noticed that many of them are moving to pre-pay with VERY (IMO) reasonable prices.
For the last year or two I’ve been using Three’s (www.three.co.uk) prepay mobile broadband offering – I wont go into details on their prices, you can check their website for that, but they are pretty reasonable. Basically, I bought the dongle a couple of years ago, and every time I go to the UK I buy a top-up voucher (can get in stores or at three’s website) and convert it into a mobile broadband voucher on their website. That gets me 30 days of access, with a data cap of whatever value “add-on” I bought – they come in 1, 3, or 7GB.
Pros
—-
– My account never expires. My SIM card is always still activated so even if Im not in the UK for months or a year or more, I only have to top-up my credit when I go to the UK, and dont have to buy a new SIM card or dongle.
– I think their prices are pretty reasonable.
Cons
—-
– The connection speeds are OK but not stellar. – Maybe around 800Kbps-1Mbps but my parents live in a REALLY bad coverage area for ALL UK networks.
– There are sometimes periods where no traffic goes through. It can be frustrating but again I think this is because of my bad coverage area.
– The mobile broadband “add-on” expires after 30 days. So even if I don’t use all of my data cap (I rarely do) the unused portion is lost. The only UK carrier I know of whose mobile broadband “add-on” doesn’t expire after 30-days is Vodafone – but they have the most expensive prices – 15 UKP for 1GB data cap.
In general Im pretty impressed with the UK’s mobile broadband offerings. More of the carriers are offering prepay – I even noticed a lot more prepay offers when I was there last week as opposed to the last time I was there, which was April. Also the dongle prices are way down. A lot of the prepay options will give you a dongle for about 30 UKP, and some of them will bundle it with 1, 3, 12 or whatever initial data cap.
Personally I’m really looking forward to when a GSM/UMTS unlocked Novatel MiFi is available. I know it’s coming out in the UK on O2 initially, but i bet that will be locked with a contract…. :-(
That map is highly questionable – I could point to a million places where coverage marked red would be a dead zero. Getting countries on board with the technology is one thing, but laying out spotless coverage like that would take the kind of infrastructure the world simply doesn’t have the money for, and won’t build for decades to come.
live in Australia was with 3mobile till about 3 weeks ago and now have just upgraded to the Telstra Next G and have now got a 3g usb stick which i get 21mb/s and for under $70 aud and thats 4 5GB. i think its good for the price and speed and 100% of Australia is covered. =]
Live in Australia.
Glad that have a wide choice of networks, speeds & prices, although a little disappointed at prices of internet/speeds in general compared to other developed countries. Have ADSL2+ at home for my “serious” downloads and uploads (impatiently waiting waiting for FTTN :)
Opted for an additional data (3GB – $40) add-on on my phone plan (to use internet on my WinMo and use tethering when mobile internet is needed. Had a choice of buying a USB modem but did not want to be contracted as phone add-ons are not, meaning can move up and down data allowances or disconnect altogehter as my needs require. 3GB data – same network – for the USB modem would be $29 (6GB for $39, 7GB for $49)
Speed tested on 3.6Mbps HSDPA network and have been able to average 1.5Mbps, 0.7Mbps being the lowest and 2.5Mbps the highest.
The huge expanses of red on the map are surely misleading. Once you get out of the urban and suburban areas I doubt whether there’s much in the way of mobile broadband, and the economics of providing it are shaky.
I use mobile broadband frequently in the UK, but not for intensive or prolonged online activity. For that I go back to fixed-line broadband at home.
From the operators’ point of view, the troublesome areas of wireless internet use are possibly not what you would expect:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39686020,00.htm