Three quarters of 3G/WCDMA operators have launched HSPA
Research by GSA confirms that 3G/WCDMA is now commercially launched by 174 network operators in 78 countries.
GSA’s latest “HSDPA Operator Commitments” survey confirms that 128 HSDPA networks have commercially launched service in 63 countries, i.e. HSDPA is enabled on almost three quarters of 3G/WCDMA networks.
A further 50 HSDPA networks are currently in deployment – making a total of 178 HSDPA operator commitments in 80 countries, an increase of 71% compared with 104 commitments in July 2006. And the number of commercial HSDPA networks has more than tripled in 12 months, from 42 to 128 today.
In SA, Vodacom and MTN were of the first mobile providers in the world to launch HSDPA and are considered to be keen adopters of new technologies.
HSDPA faster
Most HSDPA networks support 1.8 Mbps data (peak) for a typical user experience of 0.8 – 1.5 Mbps.
The GSA survey confirms the continuing trend of increasing network data speed, identifying 66 operators who have commercially launched or are deploying 3.6 Mbps (peak) data capability in their networks, as the first phase of a planned evolution to 14.4 Mbps (peak) for many operators by end 2007.
Vodacom and MTN have both confirmed that they are planning to deploy 3.6 Mbps on their networks.
Some networks already offer 7.2 Mbps (peak) commercial service, leveraging new higher-speed devices coming into the market.
Next stage is HSUPA
In the uplink direction, High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) services have been launched by operators in Europe and Asia.
HSUPA increases uplink data throughput up to 1.45 Mbps (peak) initially, later evolving to 5.8 Mbps (peak). The survey indicates at least 27 networks have currently launched, are rolling out, or are testing HSUPA.
The majority of HSPA network operators also deploy GSM/EDGE for service continuity and the best user experience of mobile broadband services.
71 of 128 commercially launched HSDPA operators (i.e. 55.5%) have also commercially launched GSM/EDGE in their networks. MTN SA’s new MD, Tim Lowry, has said that MTN are planning to market the benefits of their EDGE network more in future as he felt it was an area of their business that had been left untapped.
WCDMA leads the way in 3G markets worldwide with over 69% market share of
251 commercially launched 3G networks: 174 WCDMA (including 128 HSDPA), and 77 CDMA 1x EV-DO.
There are over 800 million GSM, WCDMA and HSDPA subscribers in HSDPA-enabled networks, according to latest GSA estimates. The number of WCDMA subscriptions exceeds 136.5 million, with HSDPA the major driver of growth.
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