A study into mobile broadband speeds has found that on average that mobile broadband users are receiving just 24% of the advertised headline speeds.
The study done by “Broadband Expert” a broadband comparison site tested 3,342 mobile broadband connections between 1st March 2009 and 31st August 2009 with the average download speed coming in at 1.1Mb which is way below the advertised maximum of 4.5Mb.
Vodafone offered the fastest mobile broadband speeds at 1.3Mb, although they also advertised their mobile broadband at speeds up to 7.2Mb and so in effect only delivered speeds at 18% of what they were advertising.
The actual average broadband speeds between the mobile broadband providers was very close, although T-Mobile offered the slowest speed of 0.9Mb.
Vodafone will have a lot of work to do as they have recently started deploying technology that they say will be able to provide mobile broadband speeds up to 14.4Mb. If they continue on with how they have performed in this test then the average speed that users will receive is 2.6Mb.
Also, with MiFi (Mobile WiFi) being introduced there is even more need for the mobile broadband providers to get their broadband speeds faster to make the use of MiFi more usable.
You can test your broadband speed by using a speed test.