Web hosting users and mobile broadband

To get the widest coverage they can, web hosting users will most likely want to reach those using mobile broadband. Imagine the possibilities and the traffic that they could get by targeting as many people as possible.

However, the technology is still in its infancy and there are many areas that need to be improved, according to Chris Marling, editor at Broadband Genie. So web hosting users may not want to be too hasty in targeting the mobile market.

Provider coverage, dongle quality and reallocation of spectrum, the name that techies give to the airwaves wireless broadband can operate on, all need improving for mobile broadband to consistently hit headline speeds, Mr Marling commented.

He said that internet service providers "may very well have expected speeds to improve dramatically this year" with High-Speed Downlink Packet Access rolled out, "but it simply doesn’t seem to be happening". Will web hosting users be satisfied if mobile broadband isn’t able to reach high speeds? Unlikely.

"Two new technologies – Wi-Max and LTE [Long-Term Evolution] – are on the horizon, but just when we’ll see the benefit of these is open to speculation," Mr Marling added.

Recent test data from Broadband Genie revealed that two-thirds of users have had to deal with speeds below 1Mb this year – less than 15 per cent of the ‘up to’ speeds claimed by some operators. The average user received just 0.87Mb, while out of more than 3,600 tests, just 16 managed a speed of more than 3Mb.

So how many people will adopt mobile broadband use? Will web hosting users targeting the market see any significant gains? Well, the more people that do use . Although operators may need to up their game if this is to be the case.

Perhaps 3 may be a company to lead the way. According to ZDNet UK, the company is to let its broadband customers cancel their contracts or get a discount if their local 3G services are not good enough to support basic web browsing and email.

Written by Sarah Woolf.