The successor to HSDPA mobile broadband will mean faster internet access on a mobile phone than via current broadband packages in homes around the UK.

Within five years Cambridge chip start-up Optisynx reckons speeds will hit 150Mbits/sec, around 10 times faster than ADSL2 and almost 100 times faster than current mobile internet on mobile phones and laptops.

Network operators could achieve this using the company's solid-state clock that combines optical and silicon components that have a very high accuracy. The Stratum 1 source used by Optisynx has an accuracy of 1 second in 30,000 years.

By comparison the Rubidium oscillator (currently used in mobile phone base stations) is only accurate to 1 second in 30 years and therefore requires very regular updates to keep it in time.

CEO of Optisynx Dominic Mikulin told PCW: "Wimax, Wibro and other wireless broadband solutions could achieve data rates in excess of 70 Mbit/s."

He added they would go on to enable "wireless broadband (4G) speeds in excess of 150Mbit/s".

Although further investment is needed, an Optichip should eventually cost $10. In conjunction with an Optibox (costing the same as existing base-station synchronisation solutions) it would enable GPS-like positioning to an accuracy of 20cm without satellites.

By putting an Optichip in a mobile phone it then it could measure the response time from a series of Optibox-enabled phone masts and calculate its position through triangulation. Mobile phones can already do this but because of poor time-synchronisation between a phone and a mast, the accuracy is 150m to 9Km.

Immediate uses of the technology will be in investment arenas where even fractions of seconds count. For example if one investor buys some stock and another buys it a fraction of a second afterwards, the second investor will pay more for it – in this situation errors in time can result in large amounts of money being unfairly lost or gained.