Scandinavia once again is emerging as a favoured test-bed for the world's most advanced mobile networks. In a riposte to TeliaSonera's launch of the first commercial LTE network in Sweden and Norway, 3 Scandinavia announced last week that it has upgraded its HSPA+ network to run at a peak speed of 84 Mbps. If the network ever actually achieves that heady speed, 3 could claim to have the fastest network in Scandinavia, if not the world.  TeliaSonera says that its network can run at up to 50 Mbps and will reach 80 Mbps during the next phase.

Of course, these headline speeds are more about marketing hype and bragging rights than reality. Actual network speeds are determined by a host of factors, such as the number of simultaneous connections in a cell and the user's proximity to the base station. One analyst has reported that TeliaSonera's LTE network hasn't run faster than 12 Mbps in his tests.

And, as is often the way in the mobile industry, the device roadmap is lagging some way behind the network roadmap. In the case of HPSA+, the fastest devices on the market today are only capable of peak speeds of 21 Mbps, while TeliaSonera only has one LTE dongle available - a Samsung model which doesn't yet support HSPA and EDGE, meaning users can't roam outside the relatively small LTE coverage area.

More important metrics

The headline speeds are really just a proxy for much more important metrics. At a time when mobile data traffic is going through the roof, what operators are really interested in is how efficiently radio access technologies use their often-expensive spectrum and, even more crucially, the total cost of delivering each gigabyte of data. Operator's c-suite executives and investors will ultimately judge the success of LTE and HSPA+ on this criteria alone.

In this context, perhaps more significant than the announcement of the world's first 84 Mbps HPSA+ network, was 3's news that it is rolling out 3G services in the 900 MHz band, which is a cost-effective and power-efficient way to provide better in-building, suburban and rural coverage.  Requiring far fewer base stations than a 3G network at 2100 MHz to cover a given geographic area, this new network should require less capital investment and result in lower operating costs than its predecessors. Qualcomm estimates a cell in a 900MHz network has a 70% larger radius than a cell in a 2100MHz network.

These characteristics potentially open up a new market for mobile operators, providing broadband services to rural communities beyond the reach of fixed-line DSL services, as Telstra has done in the sparsely-populated Australian Outback with its 850 MHz spectrum.  But 3 Scandinavia is joining a small band of 900MHz HSPA operators and there isn't yet a wide range of compatible devices available.

Moreover, there is still the question of whether the 900 MHz band can deliver enough capacity, particularly if large numbers of rural entrepreneurs uses mobile broadband networks to run their businesses.

Keeping it real, keep it frugal

Despite the apparently huge leaps in headline speeds, LTE and HPSA+ are unlikely to change the fact that apps and services aimed at mobile users will need to be as frugal as possible with network capacity as more and more people pile on to mobile broadband networks. Only then will the user experience be good enough to ensure that people keep using these applications and services time and time again.