Internet search engine and advertising giant, Google, has predicted that UK broadband access will continue to grow rapidly despite the saturation among existing fixed line ISPs. Instead Google's head of technology, Matt Brittin, claims that the next "big shift" will be to Mobile Broadband access on Smartphone devices. We thought that already happened.


The "next wave" of mobile internet access is hardly new, in fact it's been occurring for the better part of a decade and began long before Apple's iPhone surfaced. However it was only in 2008 that Mobile Broadband access finally became flexible enough for proper surfing after Three (3) began offering GigaByte allowances at consumer level prices.

Since then the market has experienced two years of fairly solid growth, helped by a new generation of Smartphone's that are capable of using the internet properly and not just for displaying ugly cut-down webpage's on a tiny screen. But it's not all swings and roundabouts.

Demand for standalone Mobile Broadband services (USB Modems / Dongles) appears to have begun a sharp fall, at least if you believe some of the thin statistics being thrown around (here). The decline is in no small part being blamed on the fact that consumer expectations of a "broadband" service are often quite different from what they receive over a mobile (cell network) connection.

Existing HSPA based Mobile Broadband networks have limited capacity, which is known to be a primary cause of slow speeds, although poor coverage plays a big part too. Popular software like Skype, VPN, multiplayer gaming, P2P and more can also have trouble working over such restrictive and capacity choked networks.

Future Long Term Evolution ( LTE ) technology will improve latency times, offer better capacity management, and as a result, should provide for a tangible if not significant boost in raw download speed.

But mobile operators will continue to have significant capacity problem. They are selling data at a rate that is far too cheap. In other words, under the current model, they cannot make money from Mobile Broadband. The demand that Google talks about may be hard to sustain without prices going up and more aggressive usage restrictions coming in.