Vodafone Doubles Mobile Broadband Speed

The popular mobile broadband provider Vodafone is reported to have doubled up its mobile broadband internet access speeds to up to 14.4Mbps from its existing headline speed of 7.2Mbps in the United Kingdom. However, the mobile broadband has also admitted that most of its customers may not experience speeds anywhere close to the advertised headline speed of 14.4Mbps.

According to Vodafone, the regions that have already been upgraded to the increased speed were Liverpool, Birmingham and parts of London. The mobile internet provider also claimed that the rollout would be continuing across the United Kingdom on an ongoing basis.

Here, something greatly interesting is the candid admission of the broadband company that their customers could only expect to enjoy typical internet access speeds of anything in the middle of 4 and 1Mbps, particularly for the fact that 10.8Mbps was the real maximum throughput of the company’s network.

Vodafone also admits the fact that earlier this year it had over-egged its mobile broadband speeds, hence needs to moderate expectations at present. Incidentally, the company had advertised initially that the speeds supported by its network was up to 7.2Mbps, and was susequently forced to admit that the real speeds were something between 1 and 5Mbps.

The facts that disappoints the average Vodafone mobile broadband customer here are; the fact that there was no much difference between the previously published actual speeds of its touted 7.2Mbps service and the practically enjoyable speeds of the proposed 14.4Mbps service of the company, and a probability that the existing customers of the company would not benefit from the speed boost due to hardware incapability.

However, Vodafone has put forth a claim, apparently for encouraging its existing customers that 80 percent of its dongles, data cards and 3G handsets would be able to take advantage of the speed enhancement.