Ofcom have announced today that it has partnered with Epitiro to measure throughput speeds on mobile broadband networks. The company will set up testing to evaluate the performance of mobile broadband on the five main network in the UK 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone.
Epitiro carried out research in the first half of 2009 and found that the average download speed of mobile broadband users in the UK was under 1Mbps, only around 25% of the average advertised download speeds. For this analysis which will be run for Ofcom, Epitiro will set up over 1,000 devices around the UK and Northern Ireland which will be used to test both the availability of mobile broadband and the available speeds. The testing will emulate consumer experience and testing will take place at different times of the day which should help identify some of the problems which can cause slow downs on mobile broadband. These include low signal strength, contention at the cell site from too many users, insufficient backhaul capacity, as well as cell handoff and traffic management issues.
The testing will take place between September 2010 and January 2011 with a report to be published by Ofcom expected in early 2011.
I already know the answer. "Performance worse than fixed line. Horribly mis-sold on mythical headline speed by ignoring mast contention and environmental factors.".
There. That didn't take four months and a wodge of tax payer money did it?