Mobile broadband is fast becoming mass market, according to the president of mobile phone giant Ericsson.

Speaking at the firm's Strategy and Technology summit in London, Carl-Henric Svanberg told attendees that market evidence showing that traffic has quadrupled in areas where HPSA is available indicates that demand for the technology is increasing at an unprecedented rate.

Mr Svanberg also noted the 128 HPSA networks and 300 HPSA devices which are now available worldwide showed that mobile broadband is becoming less of a niche service.

"This is an exciting development in our industry. HSPA with speeds of 7.2 Mbps is now being launched, and we will see embedded modems in early 2008. This indicates that mobile broadband is already becoming part of our daily lives," Mr Svanberg said.

Mr Svanberg's comments follow recent projections from research firm Berg Insight that Europe will have around five million mobile broadband connections by the end of 2007 and up to 30 million by 2011.