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Mobile broadband gets boost with new campaign

After years of slow speeds and high prices, the mobile industry is finally getting its act together with mobile broadband. Industry
body the GSM Association (GSMA) has taken a leaf out of the Wi-Fi Association’s book with the launch of its Mobile Broadband sticker campaign and analysts believe that by 2013 a quarter of broadband
homes could be mobile only.

The Mobile Broadband sticker campaign brings together 16 of the world biggest IT and mobile companies to deliver a range of mobile-broadband ready devices.
Devices bearing the Mobile Broadband sticker will have integrated connectivity with speeds of HSPA at the very minimum. In future the Mobile Broadband mark
will also incorporate HSPA Evolved and LTE (long-term evolution).

The first laptops incorporating mobile broadband will be ready to switch on and surf out of the box in 91 countries. Operators in the scheme include 3, Orange, Telefónica Europe, Telecom Italia, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile and Vodafone, who serve
more than 760 million customers according to market trackers Wireless Intelligence. Today already more than 55 million people already subscribe to Mobile Broadband
services in these 91 countries, with this figure expected to increase to nearly 70 million by the end of 2008.

The long-term future looks bright for mobile broadband. Analyst Analysys
Mason predicts that by 2013, 47% of European broadband subscriptions will use mobile networks and nearly a quarter of homes will only have mobile broadband. It says that the popularity of USB mobile broadband modems has surprised many in the industry, and that there are already indications that European consumers are substituting mobile for fixed broadband.

“Fixed operators are currently underestimating the scale of the threat of mobile broadband”, says Analysys Mason’s Rupert Wood, who argues that a repeat of fixed–mobile voice substitution will play out. Although fixed operators offer cheaper and faster broadband, they will lose out because their service is less flexible.