Comparison site Broadband Expert has revealed the results of a new survey into UK Mobile Broadband speeds, which found that operators are delivering just 24% of the advertised download rate. The average actual download speed just barely managed to creep above 1Mbps, coming in at a measly 1.1Mbps!

Regular readers will be unsurprised by the result, which was based on 3,342 Mobile Broadband speed tests conducted between March and August 2009. We have run more than a few articles and news items about the variability of Mobile Broadband performance with existing technology.

The Results

* Vodafone (Advertised: 7.2Mbps) - RESULT: 1.3Mbps
* Three (3) (Advertised: 3.6Mbps) - RESULT: 1.2Mbps
* Orange (Advertised: 3.6Mbps) - RESULT: 1.1Mbps
* O2 (Advertised: 3.6Mbps) - RESULT: 1.0Mbps
* T-Mobile (Advertised: 4.5Mbps) - RESULT: 0.9Mbps

The situation is not unlike that of fixed land-line broadband providers, where advertised rates are often very far removed from reality. However it possible for land-line services to offer an "estimation" of line speed prior to signup, which would not work with a variable wireless technology.

Sadly Mobile Broadband marketing is only going to get worse in the future when operators enhance their HSPA technology to offer even faster speeds. Without the capacity and coverage quality to support these improvements we fear that average speeds shall continue to be very low. We would like to see Ofcom taking a closer look at this issue.

Future Long Term Evolution ( LTE ) technology will make better use of local node capacity and improved performance, although LTE will initially also claim to offer speeds of up to and beyond 150Mbps. There is simply no way any operator can deliver the capacity for that with current models, so even then the problem could get worse.

UPDATE - 23rd September 2009:

Statement from Vodafone: