Perhaps the following should be nothing special for me having used double digit megabits per second connections over 3G many times before. But still, today, I was using a 3G connection for the first time to stream a full length movie over to my Intel Atom based netbook running Ubuntu Linux, Firefox and Flash for the video playback. I was doing this as I was abroad and wanted to relax in the evening a bit so I decided that I wanted to watch one of my favorite TV shows while in the hotel room. This required the use of a VPN tunnel to a server back home as the streaming was limited to national IP addresses.
The reason why I haven't used 3G networks for streaming in the past is probably that while I am at home, I have no reason for using a 3G network as I have DSL and Wi-Fi i at home. And when traveling, the amount of data I can transfer over a 3G network for a reasonable price doesn't allow streaming full movies, even though being possible from a technical point of view. But if you get 7 Gigabytes for 20 pounds, there's little left to hold you back.
UMTS has definetely got to the point that can be defined proper broadband … Now the issue is how carriers can monetize such a broad band … The required capacity will demand significant investments becoming the ROI an hot topic… Any thoughts about it?