Ten years ago, the answer to the question of whether you should get fixed broadband or settle for mobile was simple: Yes, you should, as long as it is technically possible and not outrageously expensive. Mobile broadband was an emergency solution for summer cottages and houses in rural areas where the fiber network did not reach, and a backup system for those who needed constant connectivity even if the regular connection was down. Today, both 4G and 5G networks have been rolled out and cover large parts of the country. Operators selling mobile broadband promise speeds of up to 1Gbit/s — more than many fixed connections. Does this mean that you can just as easily choose mobile broadband and ignore fiber? We all know that mobile networks have different coverage in different places, and that speeds can vary widely. Sometimes you can barely download emails on your mobile phone, other times you can stream films and play fast online games like Fortnite. How can you decide for yourself if mobile broadband can meet your needs? To answer this question, I’ve enlisted the help of researchers Anna Brunström, professor at Karlstad University, and Mikael Gidlund, professor at Mid Sweden University. Tianji Buqi How it works Apart from the fact that both fixed fiber broadband and mobile broadband can achieve bandwidths of hundreds of megabits per second — and thus qualify as broadband — they are two fundamentally different technologies. The differences are fundamentally about the way the technologies are built: Fiber carries light through a physical cable, while 5G uses radio and has to compete for space in the air. “A practical but often underestimated difference is that fiber is delivered directly into the house, while mobile broadband first has to get through the outer walls before the router even makes contact,” says Mikael Gidlund. Anna Brunström, professor at Karlstad University.Karlstads universitet Anna Brunström says that fiber normally provides more stable speeds and more even latency (delay), as each customer has their own physical connection. With mobile broadband, all users share the total capacity of the mobile network. Therefore, mobile broadband is more affected by location, time, and load. Another difference is that mobile broadband often uses something called Carrier-Grade NAT, a feature that allows many subscribers to share a few public IPv4 addresses. Instead of your router getting a unique public address, it is often given a private address, while fiber packages often provide public addressing directly. This is important if you want to set up a server at home, for example. Mobile broadband, on the other hand, is more flexible and portable. It’s easy to get started and you can often take the subscription with you to different locations. Mikael Gidlund summarizes the differences between fixed and mobile broadband as follows: ParameterFixed fiber connectionMobile broadband (4G/5G)StabilityVery high and predictable. Capacity is in practice dedicated.Variable as capacity is shared by all users in the same cell. Walls, load and distance affect.DownloadingStable high speeds even in heavy local use.Can be very high in good coverage, but drops when many people use the cell at the same time.ChargingOften symmetric or close to symmetric — important for work, AI generation, cloud services, backup.Significantly lower than the download and heavily affected by load.LatencyConsistently low and smooth. For games and real-time services.Higher and more variable. Affected by signal strength, load and distance.FlexibilityFixed solution tied to the address.Very flexible — can be taken, moved, and used in multiple locations. Could mobile broadband be better? At addresses where fiber is not already deployed, the simplicity of mobile broadband may trump the technical advantages of fixed connection. The cost can also be significantly lower in situations where you would have to bear the cost of digging and laying the fiber cable to the house yourself. Mobile broadband is also easy to take with you or activate at a new address, which makes it convenient and can be cost-effective if you want to use one subscription in several locations, such as your home and your vacation home or camper van. For many users, mobile broadband is fully capable of meeting their needs, although speeds and latency can vary more than fiber. In places where fiber is not available, mobile broadband can also provide a significantly better user experience than fixed broadband based on older technologies such as ADSL,” says Anna Brunström. Mikael GidlundTina Stafrén/Mittuniversitetet Mikael Gidlund also points to flexibility as a major advantage of mobile broadband, saying that users who mainly download (for example, surfing and streaming films) will not notice the mobile network’s more limited upload speed as much as those who, for example, play games or are on video calls. How can you decide what’s right for your situation? With fiber, it’s really only the price and the internet operator’s customer service that affect how well the connection works. When you choose a subscription, you can basically count on getting the promised speed, and it will normally not vary significantly. With mobile broadband, it’s much trickier and the situation can be completely different even for two neighbors. Always start by thinking about your household needs. How dependent are you on a stable connection at all times? What kind of services do you use and how many simultaneous users can you expect? Is it mostly downloads or do you also need to upload large amounts of data? If you need a public IP address, check that it is possible to get one for the subscription you are considering,” says Anna Brunström. Mikael Gidlund says that the performance you will get with mobile broadband depends on factors such as the environment, load, the operator’s network you choose, and the type of construction the house is built with. He recommends that anyone thinking of choosing mobile broadband should look at four things: 1. How well the network works where you live Thiago Japyassu It is rarely possible to test a subscription in advance, but you can still get a relatively reliable idea of how the connection will behave. The most practical way is to use a mobile phone from the same operator you plan to use and carry out tests where the router will be placed. It is important to measure at different times of the day, especially in the evening when the load is normally highest,” says Mikael Gidlund. Speed tests such as Fast.com work well for this purpose, while coverage maps should only be seen as a rough guide and are often over-optimistic. 2. How the house is constructed Mikael Gidlund says the material of the outer walls has a big impact on the speed of the mobile network inside the house. Many new houses have windows with energy glass covered by a metal film, which greatly attenuates the signal strength. In a modern passive house, the mobile signal becomes weak. An external antenna may be needed.Jörg Blobelt (CC BY-SA 4.0) This is a technical problem that does not depend on the operator, but on the laws of physics: The higher the frequency, the more difficult it is for the signal to penetrate materials. The fastest 5G networks use these higher frequencies. One way to get round the house design is to get an external antenna. In addition to being placed outdoors where the signal is stronger, it can be directional and have signal boosters. In some cases, this may be the only way to get a satisfactory mobile broadband speed. 3. Choice of operator The rollout of 4G and 5G is far from evenly distributed. Larger cities often have good 5G coverage. But in smaller communities and sparsely populated areas, 4G still provides the most practical coverage, and 5G may not be available at all or may only reach certain parts of the locality. Differences between operators are significant. It is not uncommon for one operator to perform excellently in a particular location, while another performs significantly worse despite similar coverage maps. Therefore, the choice of operator should be considered at least as important as the choice between fiber and mobile broadband,” says Mikael Gidlund. 4. How many people share the capacity? Cottonbro Studio All users connected to a given cell (i.e. a mobile mast) must share its total capacity. The more users and the more they try to do, the less capacity there is for each user. This is particularly noticeable in the evenings when many people are streaming films, if there is an event going on in the area so that more people than usual are present, in places where unusually many people are using mobile broadband instead of fixed, and in large apartment blocks. In other words, if you’re alone in a country house that happens to be close to a mobile tower, have few neighbors, and mainly use the internet during the day, you’re likely to get a much better experience than if you mainly want to watch Netflix in the evenings and live in a large apartment block. Are ‘unlimited’ mobile broadband plans really unlimited? Jean van der Meulen Anna Brunström says that most unlimited plans will be perceived as unlimited in normal use. But there are limits you can hit. For example, mobile broadband does not normally include roaming the country. There are also often clauses in the contract that limit abnormal use. If you “hit the cap” on your subscription, you typically get a reduced speed until the period is reset or the opportunity to top up. Always read the small print. Mikael Gidlund says that operators often have rules for so-called “fair use.” Those who use a lot of data in a short time may have their speed reduced, either temporarily during peak periods or until the end of the payment period. Evgeny Opanasenko A third option Anna Brunström points out that fiber and mobile networks are not the only technologies available to get an internet connection. Another option that has become viable in recent years is satellite internet. The most common consumer solutions, such as Starlink, rely on satellites orbiting close to the Earth with typical speeds around 50-200Mbit/s and latency around 20-50ms, which is sufficient for streaming, video conferencing, and everyday browsing. On the positive side, mobile broadband and satellite are also complementary, as satellite can work less well in densely populated areas where there is usually good mobile coverage. Areas with poorer mobile coverage often work well with satellite. Related content 6 things Starlink does better than regular home internet Never, ever put these 6 devices near your Wi-Fi router Are 5G laptops worth it? 7 key facts you need to know Read...

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Google Gemini has launched real-time, continuous translation using your phone and a pair of connected earbuds, in what looks like a powerful transformative change to the way in which we interact with speakers from other countries. Google buried its announcement in an update to Gemini voice model updates on Friday, but the additional translation features look like they could change the way in which people interact with foreign speakers. Google is launching a beta of Google Translate to accommodate both real-time translation and two-way conversations, powered by Gemini. Wander through the markets in Bangkok, and the update promises that you’ll hear the ambient conversations of vendors around you translated into English, via a pair of connected earbuds. In a two-way conversation, you’ll have the same experience, but you’ll have a chance to speak, and then your phone will play back what you’ve said via your phone’s speaker. Google is promising that Translate will auto-detect over 70 languages and 2,000 language pairs, or a direct back-and-forth translation between English, for example, and Italian. The company is also promising that the phone will filter out extraneous noise as well as preserve the nuance of the conversation using AI. Translate will even accommodate multiple languages in a single session. Those are all issues that I’ve wrestled with while traveling overseas, using various translation devices. In Taiwan, for example, I naively thought that Mandarin would be the primary spoken language, and it seems to be. But locals use others, including Hakka or Hokkien, and switched back and forth at will. I also can speak some French, but like others who lack immersion training I can speak French far better than I understand it — and probably not all that well at that. Put simply, in my experience translation apps have almost reached a level of utility where I could depend upon them. If Google’s services works as advertised, however, this could really put translation services over that critical threshold. Google published a video showing off what the new service could do, and it’s amazing in its simplicity. One of the things that I personally have loved about technology is watching its impact on culture. ReplayTV and TiVo introduced the ability to pause live TV, which was revolutionary to a generation of consumers, even those who owned VCRs. Remember GPS devices? When Google released its free Google Maps app for Android phones with GPS and directions, companies like Magellan faded from public view almost overnight. Many, many people own smartphones and headphones or earbuds, and travel overseas without fluency in the local language. A few years ago, you’d be at the mercy of a local who understood English. Google’s updated Translator app really looks like we’ve moved past that, where translators will always be available in our ear. Read...

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Who hasn’t thought to themselves, I’d really like to play something new again, but unfortunately my wallet looks so empty. These days, a full-price game costs at least $70–sometimes even more. There is still one option: taking a look at the free-to-play market for a change. There are plenty of titles out there that are genuinely worthwhile–free games that offer much more than a few hours of distraction or the usual pay-to-win traps. Here, I present the most exciting free games available right now. Marvel Rivals NetEase When Marvel Rivals was announced, many people likely thought “Oh no, not another hero shooter.” The game looked very much like another Overwatch clone that would disappear into oblivion after a short time. Instead, everything turned out differently and Marvel Rivals became a real hit at the beginning of the year. This is probably due to the familiar game formula, in which teams of six compete against each other on various maps, but also to the popular Marvel characters. Not only do they have unique abilities that fit in very well with their background from the comics, but their designs are so cool that this alone has ensured a lot of success on social media, even with lesser-known characters such as little shark Jeff, who took hearts by storm. The Battle Pass model is also quite fair, as you pay about $10 to unlock all content like new costumes. And if you miss something, you can still unlock it later by playing. The developers regularly add new characters and skins, which helps the gameplay stay fresh and exciting. All of this makes Marvel Rivals still worth a look almost a year after its release. Fortnite Epic Games When it comes to free-to-play games, Fortnite is a must. Not only does it have a huge fan base, but it’s also one of the most successful games of all time with sales in the billions. The game principle of exploring, shooting, building bases, and the ever-shrinking map has now been copied so often that it feels like a genre in its own right. However, Fortnite is still the best at attracting players of all ages. Added to this are regular collaborations with well-known brands such as One Piece or the Simpsons, viral dances on social media, and much more. This has given Fortnite a firm place in pop culture. The title is so much more than a video game. It now sees itself as a social hub for all kinds of activities, including live virtual concerts. The developers also offer the opportunity to create totally new games with the creative tools. Battlefield Redsec Electronic Arts Battlefield Redsec is brand new and very exciting, as it was only released in October 2025. This is not another standard game mode for Battlefield 6, but a free-to-play spin-off that aims to compete with Call of Duty: Warzone and follows the battle royale principle. So you don’t need the main game to play Redsec, and you get a completely different gaming experience to the standard Battlefield. Similar to Fortnite, the map gets smaller and smaller, threatening to eliminate anyone who doesn’t leave in time. Up to 100 players can compete against each other in teams, with the goal of being the last one alive. To do this, you can use weapons, equipment, and vehicles you have found, and also destroy parts of the map in classic Battlefield style. Criticism was leveled almost exclusively at the battle pass system, as Redsec shares this with the main game. So you are somewhat encouraged to play Redsec even if you don’t feel like it. Leveling up is also slowed down a little if you don’t play often enough, but you can still level up without the Battle Pass. The Sims 4 Electronic Arts The Sims series is still the best known of all life simulation games, and for good reason. The iconic characters and worlds from The Sims have shaped generations, and the fourth installment is still hugely popular. In October 2022, Electronic Arts decided to offer The Sims 4 for free, giving even more players access to the title. Although you still have to pay for the numerous expansion packs, you can still get your money’s worth, especially thanks to the active modding community. Unlike its predecessors, EA also wants to stick with the fourth installment for as long as possible, even though work is already underway on the next entry in the series. It’s still being updated with new content, even if not every change is so well-received by fans. Destiny 2 Activision Another game that once cost money and was then turned into a free-to-play title is Destiny 2. The multiplayer shooter from Bungie has been available for free since 2019 and combines a huge sci-fi world with classic looter shooter gameplay. Although the entire game is not free, new players can play through the main game’s campaign, visit all the planets, take part in some raids and dungeons, and also participate in PVP battles, although not in all endgame activities. If you have already enjoyed a lot of free game time and want more, you can try out the paid expansions afterwards, which add new story campaigns. The motivating gameplay and the sci-fi world are still worthwhile today, which is why Destiny 2 has a very active community. Overwatch 2 Activision Blizzard Before games like Marvel Rivals could run, Overwatch learnt to walk… that’s roughly how you could describe the influence of Blizzard’s hero shooter. The direct successor Overwatch 2, was launched with a few difficulties and the developers never delivered the promised single-player story mode. But that doesn’t detract from the fun of the game. Unlike its predecessor, you compete against other teams in 5v5 matches instead of six and can choose from various heroes, all of whom are beautifully designed and have their own background story. You can get to know them in great animated videos on YouTube (admittedly, playing them yourself would be even better, but you can’t have everything). Overwatch 2 is one of those games that’s easy to learn but hard to master. Depending on how much time you invest, the learning curve can be quite steep. But as soon as you get your first characters and play styles down, it’s really fun, and you’re motivated to win more matches and unlock new outfits. Unfortunately, these are almost exclusively available via loot boxes with randomized content. So if you don’t fancy this, you should look at other games with a similar principle. Guild Wars 2 NCsoft We are only presenting one MMORPG at this point, but it’s representative of the many very good online games available on the market. Guild Wars 2 may be one of the older titles, as it was first released in 2012, but it still holds a special place in the hearts of many players today. Right from the start, the game gives us an interesting fantasy world that we have rarely experienced in this way (the only comparable game would be World of Warcraft). The gameplay still feels dynamic, we can choose any class and still learn any weapon, explore the game world freely, learn professions, and decide for ourselves which stories we want to experience. The developers also release a major expansion every year that makes Guild Wars 2 even bigger and better. The last one, Visions of Eternity, was released in October 2025 and brought new content to the game, including a new story and environments. So it’s still worth diving into Guild Wars 2 today, and you don’t have to pay a single cent to do so. You have the option of buying cosmetic items or simple boosts in the shop, but it’s not necessary. 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