What is HSDPA?

You people aren’t shy in asking questions are you!? For those of you that want to know about HSDPA (Not HSPDA as I have seen it called) here is a run down.

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is a new mobile telephony protocol and is sometimes referred to as a 3.5G (or “3½G”) technology. HSDPA provides a smooth evolutionary path for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks allowing for higher data capacity (up to 14.4 Mbit/s per cell in the downlink and 2 Mbit/s in the uplink per cell). It is an evolution of the W-CDMA standard, designed to increase the available data rate by a factor of 5 or more. HSDPA defines a new W-CDMA channel, the high-speed downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH) that operates in a different way from existing W-CDMA channels, but is only used for downlink communication to the mobile. HSDPA can give throughput up to 10.8 Mbit/s.

United Kingdom deployment:

Vodafone has launched HSDPA services during the summer of 2006. Vodafone released their HSDPA laptop data card on 22 June 2006. The card comes in two versions; tri-band and quad band and will work with Vodafone’s 3G/HSDPA network in several other countries including Austria, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Hong Kong.

T-Mobile UK has announced that their HSDPA network will go live across the UK on 1 August 2006. Initial download speeds were announced to be 1.8Mbps, rising to 3.6Mbps in 2007, 7.2Mbps in 2008, 10Mbps in 2009 and 20Mbps by 2011.

O2 will launch their HSDPA services across the UK in the third quarter of 2006. O2 expects initial download speeds to be 3.6 Mbit/s (peak) at launch, increasing to 7.3 Mbit/s by early 2008, and reaching 10.2 Mbit/s by late 2009.

Orange UK has announced they will be rolling out their HSDPA service in the second half of 2006.

3 UK has announced they will begin HSDPA services in the second half of 2006.

So now you know!

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): smartphone, Pocket PC, Tracy & Matt, HSDPA, 3G, mobile telephony]