Ericsson has announced that its embedded HSPA mobile broadband chip will be used in upcoming 2011 Panasonic Toughbooks.

Panasonic Toughbooks are rugged laptops and tablets designed to be used in places that regular notebooks wouldn’t stand up to the task, such as construction sites to mountain areas, making integrated mobile broadband, rather than using external dongles, an essential feature.

Stephen Yeo, marketing director of Panasonic Computer Products Europe, said in a statement, “Ericsson’s F5521gw module is an ideal addition to our market-leading Panasonic Toughbooks. The long battery life, low power consumption, high performance and cost-effectiveness are exactly what Toughbook users need as they work in environments that would destroy the average laptop.”

The vendor said that its F55221gw PCI Express Mini card module operates on WCDMA, GSM and EDGE networks, and will support HSPA with download speeds of up to 21Mbps and upload speeds of up to 5.8Mbps. First launched in September 2010, it is based on Ericsson’s proven ST-Ericsson Thor 21Mbps thin modem and is first mobile broadband module for notebooks to support this speed.

Ericsson said that two new smaller and thinner modules would be available later this year and would be fitted to even smaller devices such as media players and personal navigation devices.

The company recently picked up a gong at the Informa LTE Awards 2011 for the best contribution to LTE R&D.