Mexico's Telcel Launches HSDPA Coverage

Mexico's Telcel has announced the commercial launch of its HSDPA service - initially in four cities - with plans to expand service to nine additional cities, for a total of thirteen cities covered in this first phase of HSDPA deployment. With the launch of 3G services in Mexico by Telcel, its parent company, América Móvil, has now completed eight commercial UMTS/HSDPA 3G networks in Latin America, operated by Argentina CTI, Brazil Claro, Chile Claro, Colombia Comcel, El Salvador Claro, Uruguay CTI and Paraguay CTI.

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, a total of 17 operators have commercially launched UMTS/HSDPA in ten countries.

According to the trade group 3G Americas, globally, there are 276 operators with UMTS networks planned, in deployment, or in trial, including 208 commercially available in 87 countries. More than two-thirds of commercial UMTS networks have been upgraded to HSDPA, and the deployment of HSUPA is the next step of this evolution. To date, HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) is commercially available on 27 networks worldwide and volume deployments are expected in 2008. The combined HSDPA and HSUPA network is called HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). Almost all UMTS operators are expected to deploy HSPA.

Figures from the Mobile World database note that Telcel (Radiomóvil Dipsa) ended last September with around 47.5 million subscribers, giving the operator a market share of 73%.

Posted to the site on 8th February 2008