subject: Mobile Broadband - Convenient, Portable & Flexible [print this page] Mobile Broadband - Convenient, Portable & Flexible
Imagine cable and DSL internet connections connected wirelessly through cellular communications, that is mobile broadband. Though wireless internet has been available in many forms for a while now, it has only recently been becoming a popular alternative to WiFi. Mobile broadband is a step up from local wireless data applications such as WiFi which gets rid of the wire, but not the confinement. A user must be stationary and in a WiFi hotspot (generally inside) when using WiFi technology. WiFi could be considered as the data transfer counterpart of the cordless telephone, whereas mobile broadband corresponds to the cellular phone, which enables access to high speed data almost anywhere in the world. Wireless communication has become the standard for the business world. Remote wireless internet connection is becoming more and more popular each day and has changed the way businesses communicate internally and externally. It truly has become a wireless world.
Mobile broadband technology such as 3g is powered by the same technology that makes cell phones work. It is all down to radio waves and their frequencies. Mobile phones and the mobile-phone radio towers communicate with each other by sending packets of digital information to each other through radio waves. With standard telephone calls, the packets of information carry only voice or audio data. For mobile broadband, the packets of information would be other types of data such as e-mails, web pages, streaming video and music files.
There are a few different types of mobile broadband, which can make life confusing. Below is a list detailing them:
-The first form of mobile broadband was EDGE, also known as 2.5g. Though it was quite slow and expensive, so take up was poor.
-After EDGE came 3g or UMTS. 3g was a little quicker and became a decent alternative if there were no WiFi hotspots available.
-Following 3g was HSDPA. It is quite fast, though not as fast as WiFi.
-Currently HSUPA is the standard, with bandwidth similar to WiFi speeds.
A new format that is currently being developed is called WIMAX. WIMAX, or 4g, will be able to give users broadband connection speeds faster than the WiFi speeds currently offered in popular hotspots. It will also have a very wide network coverage ratio, which means more people being able to access the internet from more places. It is becoming commonplace for laptop manufacturers to incorporate mobile broadband receivers into the design of new notebooks, and with the huge increase in speeds of mobile broadband over the last few years; internet via cable may become a thing of the past.
