GSA Confirms Near 100 HSDPA Network Deployments
HSDPA is market reality today with 18 networks commercially launched in 14 countries – Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Isle of Man, Israel, Kuwait, Madeira, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, and the USA. At least another 29 networks target HSDPA launches by the end of this year.
HSDPA is the first evolution of WCDMA and is part of the evolutionary path of 3G enhancements to the GSM technology family. The primary benefit of HSDPA is improved end-user experience for most existing services, while new services are enabled.
For example, the mobile office experience dramatically improves, as does voice and video over IP applications, interactive gaming, push to talk/push to X services, faster video and music downloads, and file transfers.
Most WCDMA networks are expected to activate the HSDPA upgrade for delivering the high speed mobile broadband experience. Additional HSDPA deployments to those identified in this survey are in progress but unannounced.
No new spectrum/carrier is needed to roll out HSDPA in the network. At present, WCDMA can provide voice and data services on the same carrier simultaneously. This also applies to HSDPA.
Locally both MTN and Vodacom has rolled out HSDPA services, making South Africa one of the leading countries in the mobile broadband arena.
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