Mobile Broadband just not fast enough

64 per cent of users polled by Broadband Genie reported themselves unhappy with the speed of their mobile broadband, in a result that the comparison service describes as "damning".

Given the question "Is your mobile broadband fast enough?", 63.8 per cent of the 1,160 people polled said it wasn't. More surprising were the 24.7 per cent who "didn't know", and the 11.5 per cent who are apparently perfectly happy with the speed of their mobile connectivity. A quick poll around the office shows everyone would like faster broadband, fixed and mobile, so we find it surprising that over 10 per cent of mobile users are completely satisfied.

Mobile broadband has, of course, moved into the mainstream now, where punters expect it to operate at advertised speeds. Such things are measures of what's possible, rather than what's practical, and radio is a very variable medium no matter how you encode it, so the problem is one of unmet expectations. As Broadband Genie puts it:

"The public perception of mobile broadband is often of a service that is comparable in speed and stability to fixed-line broadband, which simply isn't the case – and won't be for the foreseeable future."

Hard to argue with that. Though next-generation technologies make great promises, it is not clear who will pay for them, or how, so we're probably stuck with the current infrastructure for a while.

The poll makes us glad that at least 10 per cent of users are happy with the current speeds, even though we were always under the impression that it wasn't possible to have "enough" bandwidth. ®