The parent company of O2, Telefonica, has announced that they are to start trials of next-generation mobile broadband technology in 6 countries, one of which will be the UK.
The next-generation technology called Long Term Evolution (LTE) when at it’s peak can reach speeds of up to 340Mb which is hugely faster than what most mobile broadband operators offer as a maximum of 7.2Mb currently. In reality as the connection is shared with other users it is expected that a reliable 2-5Mb mobile broadband connection will be achievable.
As the LTE works on 3G technology there is already work on the next replacement for it to work on 4G technology that will be able to reach speeds of up to 1Gb.
These developments and the room for increasing the speed make LTE and mobile broadband ever more popular. If speeds can reach anyway near the advertised top speeds we will genuinely have a viable alternative for fixed line broadband, even when the fibre broadband has been rolled out as that will offer a maximum speed of 40Mb with BT or currently 50Mb with Virgin Media, although these broadband speeds are also likely to rise in the future.