Here in the US, excitement has been high over Verizon's first Android handset, the Motorola Droid; so high, in fact, that it has actually begun to make an appreciable dent in iPhone favoritism.

This is partially due to the fact that a large number of iPhone users were Verizon customers before they got the iPhone, and still consider Verizon's wireless network to be superior to AT&T's. Verizon's "There's a map for that" advertising campaign has also added to the company's reputation for having a more robust network than AT&T.

Verizon seems to be welcoming huge consumers of mobile bandwidth with the Droid.

Now the Droid has been spotted in Germany, equipped with UMTS/GSM radios under the name Motorola Milestone on Telefonica's O2 network.

Germany's O2 network is not viewed nearly as favorably as Verizon is here in the United States; it's actually the nation's fourth largest mobile carrier behind T-Mobile, Vodafone, and KPN's E-Plus. However, the carrier has made some serious strides toward becoming a bigger competitor in the market.

Part of this is by similarly preparing for higher mobile data traffic.

In late September, O2 completed the "largest ever live network upgrade in Germany," by adding 5,199 new dual-mode 2G/3G base stations to help carry more data traffic.

The new base stations all came from Chinese wireless manufacturer Huawei Technologies, and Walter Haas, CTO Huawei Germany said, "Our advanced SingleRAN solution enables the operator to simplify the radio access network unifying both GSM and UMTS functionalities. This state-of-the-art network will be significantly enhanced in coverage quality and able to meet the operator' s demands for increased data traffic."

O2's most recent string of network upgrades started at the beginning of 2009, when the company predicted that its subscribers would consume triple the amount of mobile broadband bandwidth they did in 2008.