HSPA networks has evolved over the years. In fact, when it was first introduced in the market, the 3 operators all have various plans to cater for the users. Some operators have it covered in certain areas of the country while some launch it countrywide, upgrading it's base stations to support the indicated speed.

Currently the maximum available speed is 7.2Mbps, most mobile broadband users aren't able to achieve up to 4mbps of it's rated speed. This is generally because HSPA or HSPA+ networks are shared bandwidth. Thus, if multiple users are logged into the same base station and if the base station isn't able to support the load, users experience will be dodgy.

Knowing that it is a shared wireless pipe technology, HSPA+ raised the upper limit of the base station support from the current 14.4mbps all the way up 21mbps. The uplink limit of 1.9Mbps is also raised to 5.76Mbps. What that would mean is that it has a better data capacity to support more users at higher speeds.

My own experience with mobile broadband began when I terminated my fixed line broadband due to slowness. You might ask, wasn't fixed line broadband faster. I would definitely say YES. So why did I switch to mobile broadband. The reasons is apparent,  I need to be mobile and I need a replacement for my home broadband.

Despite all the negative reports on forums about Wireless broadband, i took the dive and my experience has been very good. Seriously, it depends on where you use it sometimes. The time you use the dongle can also give you different results.

Last month, Starhub began it's trial for their 21Mbps HSPA+ trial. I was fortunate to test it out. I was given the Huawei HSPA+ modem and I tested it in a couple of areas, from East to West side of Singapore.

You can check out the results on page 2 of this review.

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