By: Ben Robinson, IntoMobile Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 1:57 PM
Vodafone UK is extending it’s HSPA coverage for mobile broadband to 6 new cities – Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Reading. This will give users downlink speeds of up to 7.2 Mb/s, with up to 1.8 Mb/s on the uplink. Right now, HSPA is only available in London and major UK airports, so it’s a big step forward in the always-tricky coverage equation.
Right now, the mobile broadband market (and by that I mean the market segment served by those USB 3G dongles, attached to Laptops) is extremely competitive – all the Operators now have an offering, with the dongles selling like proverbial “hot-cakes”. So it’s going to be interesting to see in the next few months, how the marketing battle play out in the media for download speed, cost, and coverage!
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career
when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has
now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the
next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas!
He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently
became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years
when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to
'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make
your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device)
isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question
of why you continue to use it...
His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and
infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the
occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience
in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with
regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.