GSMA Tones Down Rhetoric Towards Reality

It's always worth double-checking facts. I saw this headline ("Mobile to reach 100Mbps before fixed-line, claims GSMA") and was about to write a pithy response, mentioning awkward facts such as HongKong Broadband Network's residential Symmetric Gigabit service having been available for a year or so.

Then I read the full article, which includes sensible commentary from Dan Warren saying "obviously you never get the top speed and they vary with distance from the base station and interference". Further, the GSMA's recent press release of 50m HSPA subscribers cites "peak data speeds over HSPA are currently between 3.6Mbps and 7.2Mbps. This translates to an end user speed of more than 1Mbps".

In other words, the GSMA is actually being realistic about real-world speeds for mobile broadband, and is in fact now trying not to fall into the trap of equating a cell sector's worth of shared capacity (under ideal radio conditions) with the achievable throughput of individual homes' dedicated wired connections. Good - HSPA is becoming hugely successful anyway, and doesn't need an overdose of cringe-worthy marketing hype.

I can't find any quote which directly suggests the GSMA thinks that it will beat fibre to 100Mbit/s. And in any case, talking about the UK in particular, it's probably worth suggesting that the GSMA might want to have a word with a couple of its members to help this along.

O2 and T-Mobile UK currently have legal action pending against Ofcom which is delaying the 2.6GHz spectrum auction. Given the crowded state of the UK mobile market, that frequency band is pretty much the only one in which MNOs are likely to get the requisite 2 x 20MHz channels needed for LTE to run at 100Mbit/s. And it's also worth pointing out that even when that happens, 2.6GHz will struggle with indoor performance in many places, unless helped along by femtocells connected to - wait for it - fixed broadband.

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