3G dongles grow in popularity

Mobile broadband dongles are becoming so popular that specialist unlockers – such as Nextgen – are starting to offer software which enables them to be used on any suitable 3G network.

This would be very useful for those on Vodafone who want to swap to 3, or vice versa. Nextgen offers to unlock the highly popular Huawei E200 for US$30.

There's also software on the official Huawei site which can upgrade the E220 to the higher 7.2 Mbit/s speed which Vodafone currently offers in parts of the UK.

There are reports of users getting average speeds of around 2.5Mbit/s peaking at a round 4.3Mbit/s in 7.2 Mbit/s areas.

Indeed, China's Huawei, is continuing to dominate the world of 3G dongles. It has just reported that sales of 3G and GSM modems increased by 100 per cent in Q1-Q2 2008 compared to the same period last year.

Interestingly, demand for GPRS/EDGE style dongles is still significant. In the first six months of 2008, the company shipped 800,000 units – with half of those going to China and India.

On the 3G front, it has just secured a further 25 new customers bringing its total to 111.

Overall, its products have been placed with over 235 operators in 115 different countries and regions. Its accumulated shipments of over 12 million units put Huawei firmly in the Number One slot, the company claims.

Huawei also continues to promote its cellular infrastructure products which it says can support future standards such as HSPA+ and LTE. Indeed Qualcomm recently claimed to made the first HSPA+ call and achieved throughput speeds of 20 Mbit/s.

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