High Speed Packet Access Broadband Mobile Communications

Abstract

Mobile broadband communications systems have already become a fact during the last few years. The evolution of 3G Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS) towards HSDPA/HSUPA systems have already posed a forceful solution for mobile broadband and multimedia services in the market, making a major step ahead of the main competitive technology, that is, WiMax systems based on IEEE 802.16 standard. According to the latest analyses (GSM Association, 2007; Little, 2007), while WiMax has gained considerable attention the last few years, HSPA is expected to dominate the mobile broadband market. The main reasons behind this forecast are: • HSPA is already active in a significant number of operators and is going to be established for the majority of mobile broadband networks worldwide over the next five years, while commercial WiMax systems are only making their first steps. • Mobile WiMax is a competitive technology for selection by operators in only a limited number of circumstances where conditions are favourable. Future mobile WiMax systems may potentially achieve higher data transfer rates than HSPA, though cell coverage for these rates is expected to be substantially smaller. In addition, WiMax technology is less capable in terms of voice traffic capacity, thus limiting market size and corresponding revenues. • In order to overcome the aforementioned disadvantages, WiMax commercial launches are expected to introduce a relative CAPEX disadvantage of at least 20–50% comparing to HSPA, in favorable cases, while there are indications of an increase by up to 5–10 times when accounting for rural areas deployments. The short commercial history of HSDPA (based on Rel.5 specifications of 3GPP) started in December of 2005 (first wide scale launch by Cingular Wireless, closely followed by Manx Telecom and Telekom Austria). Bite Lietuva (Lithuania) was the first operator that launched 3.6 Mbps. HSUPA was first demonstrated by Mobilkom Austria in November 2006 and soon launched commercially in Italia by 3 in December 2006. Mobilkom Austria launched the combination of HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA in February 2007. By September of 2007, less than two years after the first commercial launch, 141 operators in 65 countries (24 out of 27 in EU) have already gone commercial with HSDPA with 38 operators among them supporting a 3.6 Mbps downlink. In addition, devices supporting HSDPA/HSUPA services are rapidly enriched. 311 devices from 79 suppliers have already been available by September 2007, including handsets, data cards, USB modems, notebooks, wireless routers, and embedded modules (http://hspa.gsmworld.com).