Higher Speed 3G Trials a Sucess

Nortel and Qualcomm have completed the industry's first end-to-end calls using WCDMA's emerging broadband technology -- High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) -- on a commercial network and handset equipment.

The calls were completed using commercial network equipment from Nortel and the industry's first available handset solution, which is enabled by Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem, MSM6275 chipset. Calls were made over a live air connection to a moving automobile to demonstrate the stability of the connection in a real-world environment.

For example, a five-megabyte music file was downloaded in less than 30 seconds, and an e-mail with a three-megabyte attachment was downloaded in 20 seconds, which is comparable to DSL or ADSL speeds.

HSDPA is a migration technology for the UMTS wireless standard used by leading wireless operators across Europe, Japan and North America to deliver voice and data services. HSDPA boosts network capacity to carry up to three times as much data traffic and up to twice as many wireless users per cell site compared to today's UMTS networks. By making more efficient use of the existing network and boosting throughput, HSDPA significantly reduces operating costs while delivering a better end-user experience.

Nortel recently announced plans with mmO2 for a Pan-European HSDPA network deployment, and is working with a number of other leading global operators on HSDPA trials and deployments in 2005."

Posted to the site on 27th January 2005