Vodafone doubles speed of mobile broadband - or does it?

 

Gallery

Posted on 27 Aug 2009 at 10:54

Vodafone has doubled the speed of its mobile-broadband network - although it admits that most customers won't see anywhere near the 14.4Mbits/sec headline speed.

Parts of London, Birmingham and Liverpool have already been upgraded to the higher speed, with Vodafone claiming that "the rollout will continue across the UK on an ongoing basis".

However, the company admits that the network has a true maximum throughput of only 10.8Mbits/sec, and that "customers can expect to see typical speeds of anything between 1 and 4Mbits/sec".

Vodafone may be moderating expectations after it admitted over-egging its mobile broadband speeds earlier this year. The company initially advertised its mobile broadband network as "up to 7.2Mbits/sec", but was subsequently forced to admit that actual speeds were "somewhere between 1Mbits/sec and 5Mbits/sec" - which is roughly the same as the speeds its boasting for the new, improved network.

Vodafone insists the network upgrade will improve performance. "Typical speeds will vary during peak periods and that in response to high sales and exceptionally high demand from our customers, we're installing this extra capacity so that more people will see faster speeds more of the time," a company spokesperson claims.

There's also a chance that existing Vodafone customers won't benefit from the higher speeds because their hardware isn't capable of handling them. The company claims that more than 80% of data cards, dongles and 3G handsets should be able to take advantage.