Hand in hand with advances in laptop development, one of the things that has driven the continued pace of the mobile computing revolution has been the availability of high bandwidth mobile broadband.
And it has to be said that the mobile telecoms operators in the
But even if users have a growing number of suppliers to choose from, actually just how well are mobile computing professionals in the
Broadband, whether fixed or mobile, has since its inception really been fixated on bandwidth speed. This is logical as there is a rather fundamental direct correlation between the types of services that you can use and the bandwidth of the connection.
I'm not proposing here to get into a debate about theoretical an typical maximum bandwidths, but let's for argument's sake say that the wide availability of 3.6 Mbps connections has totally enabled the concept of mobile computing enabling business applications to be used at acceptable speeds.
And these speeds will inevitably rise. Virtually all of the operators will offer a 7.2 Mbps service and anyone following the news coming out of Barcelona this week at Mobile World Conference (MWC) would have been struck at the number of technology firms putting in place plans to exploit very high bandwidth networks.
For example, in a move that could ultimately prove very popular to mobile computing users, Vodafone is testing a 3G HSPA+ mobile broadband connection that could deliver maximum download speeds of 20 Mbps.
Using technology supplied by Ericsson, Huawei and Qualcomm, Vodafone claims to have achieved one of the fastest 3G data connections currently possible during field trials of the HSPA+ MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology on its southern Spanish network and in the centre of
Such networks will enable a lot business services to be carried out on mobile computing platforms, even bandwidth hungry ones like video conferencing.
Yet isn't there something missing? It's all very well for such high bandwidth to be rolled out at airports and train stations but isn't the other key element in the equation the coverage area?
Without picking on Vodafone, there were scant details from MWC or anywhere really about operators extending the coverage of the present high bandwidth networks. Anyone who's tried to gain 3G connections outside of large conurbations will appreciate that.
Shouldn't we be expecting more that just speed from the mobile broadband suppliers? It's not just how big the pipe is its where you can use it that counts just as much.
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