3 to get 5 times quicker

3UK will supercharge its many content services with the launch of mobile broadband later this year.

16:30, Aug 16th by Tim Green
(c) Mobile Entertainment

The 'mobile media company' successfully demonstrated HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) broadband network technology to industry insiders yesterday and confirmed it will upgrade its 3G network for subscribers in Greater London before 2007.

The ability to speed up and enrich content services with 'mobile broadband' will be a particular boon for a network that has led the market in areas such as music promo downloads and live concert streaming.

During the demo, 3 showed clips of the movie X-Men 3 encoded at 1Mbps, which would be impractical across a 3G network. The company expects HSDPA to make downloads five times quicker than 3G in the short term (3.6Mbps compared to 384Kbps). Eventually the technology could reach speeds of 14.4Mbps.

Although no new content services have been unveiled with mobile broadband in mind, 3 is clearly working on it. It has a track record of innovation, having been the first UK network to launch, for example, a user generated video clips service.