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7th April - 3G Americas announced a breakthrough in commercial
volume with 107 live HSDPA (High Speed Download Packet Access)
commercial networks in 55 countries worldwide, and yet another
82 HSDPA networks planned or in deployment. Among those countries
deploying HSDPA is Brazil, the largest mobile market in Latin
America with an estimated 66.5 million GSM customers today
according to Informa Telecoms & Media, WCIS. The market
will be led by the recent announcement of Telemig Celular
and Ericsson to construct and deploy the first UMTS network
with HSDPA capacity in Brazil.
The momentum of the third generation of GSM’s 3G evolution
continues to escalate. In only 16 months since the first launch
of HSDPA by Cingular Wireless in December 2005, the number
of commercial HSDPA networks has increased worldwide from
one to 107. PC cards, the first generation of HSDPA-capable
devices, became available in Q4 2005; handsets, in Q2 2006.
There are more than 200 HSDPA devices that have been launched
in the market since the first deployment of HSDPA.
2006 was the year HSDPA technology made its way across the
Americas, with networks in service in the US, Canada, Puerto
Rico, and Chile. “HSDPA is now coming to Brazil, where
it's estimated that 20 million GSM subscribers were added
in the year between Q1 2006 and Q1 2007, resulting in an approximate
64% market share for GSM," commented Erasmo Rojas, Director
of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas.
HSPDA users today experience throughput rates in excess of
1 Mbps under favorable conditions, as well as latency reduced
to 70-100 milliseconds. Already, more than two-thirds of the
163 commercial UMTS operators have deployed HSDPA. Later in
2007, HSUPA, the comparable high-speed technology for the
uplink, will begin commercial deployment. The combined technologies
for the downlink (HSDPA) and uplink (HSUPA) will be referred
to as HSPA.
HSPA users will experience peak achievable rates of close
to 1 Mbps in the uplink under favorable conditions. This translates
into a wide variety of new, differentiated multimedia services
with greater efficiency such as video calling, interactive
gaming and other applications. Added Rojas, "Latin American
GSM operators, like those in the US and Canada, expect value-added
data applications to continue to grow in the years ahead.”
It is expected that virtually all of the operators publicly
committed to UMTS will upgrade to HSPA, providing them with
a significant increase in data capacity and a much-reduced
network cost for data services.
About 3G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Wireless
Technology
The mission of 3G Americas is to promote and facilitate the
seamless deployment throughout the Americas of GSM and its
evolution to 3G and beyond. The organization fully supports
the Third Generation (3G) technology migration strategy to
EDGE and UMTS/HSPA adopted by many operators in the Americas
that is expected to account for up to 85% of next-generation
customers worldwide. 3G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue,
WA with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas,
TX.
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