Vodafone trials super-fast Hspa+ mobile broadband

Posted by David Walker on Thu 15 Jan 2009

New dongle (and phone) required

Your experience of mobile broadband will no doubt be coloured by where you live and the weather forecast for that day. if it's a sunny day in London, good times. if it's pouring down in Peterhead, you'll be lucky to access your inbox. So we're not entirely convinced about the claims of Vodafone's proposed Hspa+ mobile broadband.

But in theory it's great news. A step up from 3G, Hspa+ uses 'advanced modulation' and 'multiple antennae' to boost speeds to a theoretical 16Mbp/s, although that's likely to be more likely to between 13Mbp/s 'in good conditions', dropping to a low of 4 Mbp/s for the average urban user. To put that into context, the 13Mbp/s speed should mean high quality video downloads straight to your phone or mobile device - and it's twice the top speed currently being offered by Vodafone.

All good news? Well, not quite, You need new kit to use it, which will mean a phone upgrade and new dongle. But don't let that worry you for now - Vodafone is still testing new hardware and a roll-out of the service is unlikely this year.

Link: Vodafone

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