Development
In 2002, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) established a Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) working group. They developed the IEEE 802.20 standard in 2008, with amendments in 2010. Another working group, IEEE 802.16, produced standards adopted in products using the WiMAX trademark.
A barrier to mobile broadband was the coverage the mobile phone networks can provide. In many areas customers will not be able to achieve the speeds advertised due to mobile data coverage limitations. In addition, there are issues with connectivity, network capacity, application quality, and mobile network operators' overall inexperience with data traffic.
Demand from emerging markets fueled growth in mobile broadband. Without a widespread fixed line infrastructure, many emerging markets leapfrog developed markets and use mobile broadband technologies to deliver high-speed internet access to the mass market.
The global Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) family of standards - which includes GSM, EDGE, WCDMA, HSPA and LTE – is the most widespread way to deliver mobile broadband. 3GPP standards are serving about 90 percent of the world’s mobile subscribers.
After mobile broadband subscribers hit 500 million in 2010, at the end of 2011 Ericsson predicted it will be doubled to a billion. 400 million come from Asia Pacific region, followed by North America and Western Europe with more than 200 million subscriptions each.
In the United Kingdom, a steering group known as Digital Britain was set up, with the aim of promoting digital telecommunications in October 2008. The conclusion of the steering group was a recommendation that the government took up, namely to have 100% broadband coverage, with a minimum speed of 2 Mbps in the United Kingdom by the year 2012. Mobile "broadband" using 3G is now not expected to be able to ensure 2 Mbps broadband coverage to the more remote areas of the UK as coverage is too poor and contention too high. Another suggestion is Ka Satellite for rural areas, which may be very cheap by the end of 2010 if Eutelsat's KA-SAT is successfully launched. There is also a smaller Ka Sat in 2010 from Avanti. However, round-trip satellite latency will average around 625ms
With the development of the 4G LTE signalling standard, download speeds could be increased to 300 Mbps per second within the next several years. Within the United Kingdom, EE will be allowed a head start over competitors in developing the first commercial 4G network in the UK.
Read more about this topic: Mobile Broadband
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