Oct 6, 2009
Internet dongles causing network strain
More than one billion people around the world will be accessing the internet by mobile broadband. These are the latest predictions for mobile broadband users by 2012.
Slightly worrying however, is the fact that in Europe the current uptake on mobile broadband and internet dongles has caught the operators out. The number of new mobile subscriptions are rising so fast that the mobile networks are struggling to keep up.
In the UK, the mobile broadband operator Vodafone (visit the Vodafone website) is increasing its mobile network speeds up to 14.4Mbps – more than double the current speeds.
In the UK, by as early as March 2009, a whopping 3 million broadband connections had been established across UK households. This is way faster than the adoption than fixed, landline based broadband. What we don’t know yet is if these new mobile connections are in addition to established home broadband connections.
The internet dongle is here to stay and the flexibility and portability it brings seems to hit the spot with UK web users. (3 million web users according to Ofcom – visit the Ofcom website).
Mobile internet dongles and mobile smart phones have really driven up the data usage on the mobile networks; in France the mobile operator SFR has recorded that a single mobile dongle requests 450 times the amount of data more than a mobile phone. With this in mind it is easy to see why the networks are becoming congested and why so many complaints of poor network speeds ae being logged with Ofcom.
