Wireless broadband services will be in focus for the mobile industry during 2006, according to a new report from the telecom analyst firm Berg Insight, and 3G networks upgraded with HSDPA technology are in pole position.HSDPA will enable data speeds up to 3.6Mbps, and such services will be widely available at the end of the year for the same price as a conventional fixed-line DSL broadband connection with comparable performance. Berg expects Orange, T-Mobile, 3, O2 and Vodafone “among others” to launch HSDPA on several European markets starting from Q1-2006. T-Mobile is already shipping HSDPA-ready data cards.Berg estimates that there will be around 120m notebook PCs in Europe by 2009, all needing to connect to the Internet; the market is huge – There is much talk about various emerging technologies, but HSDPA is actually here right now and combines high performance with good coverage. No other technology can be expected to achieve the same footprint in the near future” said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst at Berg Insight.According to the report there are currently more than 1m 3G data card users worldwide.
Feature