Vodafone's Spanish division has successfully tested the next evolution of Mobile Broadband technology to 16Mbps using the HSPA+ (HSPA Evolved) standard, which could one day offer download speeds of up to 42Mbps and uploads of 22Mbps.

Not to be confused with future 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies, Vodafone now plans to trial the service with peak speeds of up to 21Mbps over the coming months.

Real world performance can often be far slower, though Vodafone still expects downloads of up to 13Mbps to be possible in good conditions with 4Mbps becoming the average. Precise dates for a commercial release around Europe remain undecided.