O2 plans to offer better mobile broadband service

  • December 31, 2009

Leading UK mobile broadband provider, O2 admitted that its mobile data networks, especially in high traffic areas, need to be improved to prevent the outages from happening in future.

This year, O2 mobile broadband users were left without broadband access, a couple of times, due to the outages that affected cities like London. Subsequently, the ISP put the blame on the iPhone users for causing excess mobile data traffic which O2 mobile data networks could not cope with.

However, O2 is planning to upgrade its network capacity to meet the increasing mobile broadband usage, said Rohan Dunne, the CEO of O2 to the Financial Times.

“Where we haven’t met our own high standards then there’s no question, we apologise to customers for that fact. But it would be wrong to say that O2 has failed its customers en masse.”

According to the report, O2 is likely to build 200 additional masts in London to increase the capacity as well as the coverage. The provider would also use other methods to prevent the network congestion during peak hours, such as implementing an effective traffic management system etc.

Meanwhile, O2 has also revealed its plans to launch next generation mobile broadband service in the future. The provider successfully trialed Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology to achieve a download speed of 150Mbps with a dongle at Slough, its headquarters. Huawei, the global maker of dongles for laptop users was O2′s technological partner during the LTE trial.

According to the latest Wireless Intelligence survey, the existing HSPA mobile broadband networks witness a huge surge in traffic during the last two years due to the increased use of smartphones, mobile USB dongles etc.

Next generation mobile broadband technologies like HSPA+ and LTE would help the ISPs to meet the growing mobile broadband traffic, said the GSM Association in the latest report.

Although LTE infrastructure requires huge investment, the GSMA says that the network operators worldwide will be urged to adopt to this future technology to resolve the network issues that the existing HSPA infrastructure is incapable to handle.