New research released by broadband comparison site Broadband Expert suggests that the average download speed of mobile broadband in the UK is 1.46Mbs. Earlier surveys by the same company revealed home broadband services deliver average speeds of 2.95Mbs, so Mobile Broadband is half the current speed of home broadband.
Download speeds should increase over time. One thing that seems to have been glossed over by the survey is that the majority of people who have signed up for mobile broadband are more likely to have the older, cheaper USB modems that run at a maximum download of 1.8Mbps. In my opinion this would skew the results and actually make an average of 1.46Mps pretty bloody good! In another year I would expect the average to rise closer to 2.5Mbps as the newer modems and upgrades to the operators networks kick in. In fact, in a year we may see average home broadband speeds being overtaken by mobile broadband. You heard it here first…
1.46Mps is way ahead of the speeds we all accepted at home 3 years ago and it’s more than fine for browsing the internet, receiving emails and watching shorter video clips. It’s obviously a little slow for downloading large amounts of music and video, but with a relatively low download cap (a maximum of 3GB per month in most cases) you aren’t likely to be using a Mobile Broadband for lots of heavy downloading.
The top download speeds ranged from 2.3Mbps for Vodafone to 1.1Mbps for T-Mobile and 1Mbps for Three. The average upload speed for all providers was 0.38Mbps which is a little on the low side. Upload speed describes how quickly you can send data from your laptop which is important for sending large documents such as emails with photo or Powerpoint attachements.
As you may expect, download speed varied between areas depending on the mobile coverage and the network used, with higher speeds more likely to be achieved in bigger towns and cities. It’s important to note that even in areas of good coverage 3G signals can quickly become weak once deeper inside a building.