Ericsson: HSDPA Commercial Service Likely in 12 Months

Latin America should see its first High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) networks enter commercial service within the next 12 months as the test phase nears completion, according to Niklas Heuveldop, Americas sales VP for Swedish equipment supplier Ericsson.

There are several countries that are equally likely to launch first, Chile as always being the prime candidate, but there is some doubt as to whether Brazil would be one of them as a lot still depends on regulatory decisions, Heuveldop told BNamericas on the sidelines of an HSDPA demonstration in Chile.

Mexican operator Telcel is the only Latin American operator listed by GSM support organization 3G Americas as having plans to deploy HSDPA, scheduled for some time in 2007.

3G Americas also expects several Latin American operators to launch UMTS service, about a third as fast as HSDPA, mostly in early 2008. Colombia's Ola stands out from the crowd with an expected UMTS launch before end-2006.

HSDPA not only allows all the broadband applications that people are used to getting from a cabled ADSL connection, but also allows operators to provide that service at much lower rates, Heuveldop said.

Commercially deployed HSDPA networks today allow download rates of 400-700Kbits per second, whereas CDMA2000 EV-DO, the leading mobile broadband technology in Latin America today, is in practice delivering average speeds of 300-600Kbps.

There is always talk of Latin American markets not being ready for high volume mobile data service, and Siemens Brasil VP Aluizio Bretas Byrro recently pointed out that 3G services did not become mainstream in Europe until five years after the relevant spectrum licenses were sold.

However, Latin America is more homogenous than similarly sized regions in other parts of the world and new technologies tend to proliferate very rapidly here once they take an initial hold, Ericsson's Southern Cone marketing director Eduardo Griffa told BNamericas.

BNAmericas.com"

Posted to the site on 31st August 2006