Popularity of mobile broadband still growing

Recent figures released by mobile communications giant Orange have suggested that the popularity of mobile broadband is continuing to grow.

Recently the mobile communications giant Orange released figures that showed how the popularity of mobile broadband appears to be enjoying continued growth. The company figures show that Orange now has 3.8 million users that have either 3G phones or 3G dongles, which provide Internet access whilst on the move by connecting to a laptop.

One official from Orange said that popularity was increasing rapidly even though mobile Internet access was still a relatively new technology that was still in the earlier stages of development. He said: “The 3G dongle market is in the early stages of development; it only kicked off last year.”

The data also showed that in the space of a year dongle subscriptions at Orange increased by more than five hundred percent, and dongle data usage soared by more than four thousand percent, reflecting the increasing popularity that mobile broadband is enjoying.

However, it has been pointed out that there is a downside to this rising popularity, and this is the issue of network traffic. Industry officials have said that mobile communications giants such as Orange will have to be mindful that the more popular the service gets the heavier network traffic will get, and until this can be accommodated this could have an adverse effect on the service that users get.

Orange offers a maximum download speed of 7.2Mbps with its mobile broadband service, but with networks getting busier and more congested most will not get close to this maximum speed. However, officials from Orange said that they are looking at improving speeds further, stating: “Speeds with dongles have increased quite dramatically – we have plans with industry to further in crease those speeds over time.”