Here's good news to mobile broadband fans: Vodafone held a successfully trial of a mobile broadband technology achieving actual peak data download rates of up to 16Mbps.

Vodafone

The high speed data connection was achieved during field trials of HSPA+ 64QAM technology on Vodafone Spain's network.

The company said that it will trial mobile broadband data connections with peak rates of up to 21Mbps early in 2009 using HSPA+ MIMO functionality.

If the trials prove a success, Vodafone will make this technology available in select commercial networks.

HSPA+ is the next step in the 3G HSPA evolution roadmap. It increases performance through the use of a more advanced modulation technique called 64QAM. Performance can be enhanced further through the use of multiple antennae on both base stations and data devices, or what we know as the MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output).

Features of both 64QAM and MIMO however require new HSPA+ mobile broadband devices.

At present, Vodafone says that its mobile broadband customers can download data and surf the net at speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, delivering an internet experience comparable with fixed broadband.