Mobile broadband 75% slower than advertised

30 June 2009

A report finds the average UK mobile broadband download speed is 0.9Mbps - a quarter of that advertised

Is your phone downloading slower than you'd expect? There's a reason for that. Research group Epitro's latest report states that the average UK mobile-broadband download speed is 0.9Mbps-just a quarter of what most providers promise.

Epitro conducted their survey between December 2008 and May 2009, installing monitoring software on 1,300 mobile broadband users' phones, spread over all six major service providers - O2 (who recently vowed to improve mobile broadband service), 3, Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin Media and Vodafone).

By monitoring such activities as downloading, web surfing, streaming video, online gaming and VoIP calling, they were able to cull over 1.4 million test results, finding that most users were given just 24% of the average 3.6Mpbs advertised.

In a statement released alongside the report, Epitro chief executive quite positively said: "This exhaustive study confirms the general consensus that mobile-broadband services are functional and, while currently slower in practice than their fixed-line competition, continually improving."

But how quickly will it improve? Mobile broadband is crucial to areas of the UK that don't receive funding for fixed-line broadband, and considering the fact that the upcoming Digital Britain report will most likely recommend a blanket 2Mbps mobile minimum, the technology won't have much time to catch up.