Most of today’s talk about the fourth generation (4G) successor to current HSPA ('up to' 14.4Mbps) based Mobile Broadband services has centred around mobile WiMAX and Long Term Evolution (LTE), although all that could be about to change.

T-Mobile and Nortel Networks have just conducted trials of a third potential contender to the crown, Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB). The trial was run while driving a car in range of three cell sites on a highway in Bonn, Germany at an average speed of 41 Miles per hour.

The technology managed to achieve a download rate of up to 170Mbps and an upload rate of up to 50Mbps, which is incredibly impressive; though of course such performance would diminish when shared between many users.

Meanwhile most of the market is still targeting LTE for future use, with a smaller population eyeing up mobile WiMAX, although we suspect that both will eventually need to become interoperable with one another. More @ DSL Reports.