By: MarkJ - 16 October, 2007 (12:04 PM)
ISPreview UK has just uploaded the second part of an interview with two of the country's leading mobile phone operators,
T-Mobile and
Orange. The interview is designed to investigate the future feasibility of '
Mobile Broadband' (3G) as a viable replacement for fixed-line broadband (ADSL etc.).
In this second part we get to chat with
Orange's Head of Enablers for
Orange Business Services, Michael Lawrence (sample quote below):
2. Modern HSDPA/HSUPA 3G mobile broadband technologies have the potential to deliver speeds up to around 14Mbps downstream, will we ever see mobile operators able to offer this (what aspects hold such advances back)?
Downlink speeds are developing from 1.2M up to a theoretical maximum of 14.4Mbps in the downlink. The latter stages of this growth in data speed are still in development, but you should expect to see these speeds available in the next few years.
Further standardisation work is underway to allow expansion to around 100Mbps in the downlink and 50Mpbs in the uplink. However it will be some time before we see the commercial release of this technology.
Speeds are held back by several factors, including the devices, the processing speed of the chip in the device and the required battery life. In addition there are complex demands placed on the mobile network base stations and transmission networks.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/mb07b/The prospect of being able to connect at speeds of up to 100Mbps over a mobile phone link in the future would be an extremely impressive achievement, though as stated there are many barriers to cross before that becomes feasible.
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