Siemens Communications (the newly- formed business division) says it will be the first vendor to bring an “end-to-end solution” for “High Speed Downlink Packet Access” (HSDPA) to market, complete with PC card.
HSDPA will enable operators to significantly boost data rates in UMTS networks and provide their subscribers with average download speeds of up to 2-3Mbps, roughly corresponding to the faster DSL connection rates.
The introduction of HSDPA has been described by some vendors as a possible entry point to the market for those with few existing UMTS contracts. It is therefore crucial that “incumbent” UMTS vendors such as Siemens display good migration stories to their operator customers.
Accordingly, in January 2005, Siemens will conduct its first live demonstrations of a HSDPA network. Field tests will begin with mobile operators in Japan and Europe in the second quarter 2005. The vendor says its HSDPA solution, comprising network equipment and HSDPA PC cards, will be available for commercial operation beginning from the fourth quarter of 2005.
“With the early availability of our HSDPA solution, we will be putting UMTS mobile operators in pole position: They’ll be the first in the market to be able to offer average download speeds of up to two to three megabits per second,” said Christoph Caselitz, president of Mobile Networks at Siemens Communications. “This turbo data service will be a crucial buying criterion, first and foremost on the part of business users. The first providers to have this service in their portfolios will be able to reap the highest margins.”
Siemens says that customers will be able to integrate HSDPA into an existing UMTS network via a software update as since 2002 all its UMTS base stations have been HSDPA. This reduces the additional investments required for operators to be able to provide high added value to a lucrative customer segment, business users.
HSDPA allows more users than before to be provided simultaneously with higher data rates. This means that the existing frequency band is better utilized and the costs per bit reduced. Mobile operators can thus improve their margins with increased traffic in the networks.
High Speed Downlink Packet Access involves a modulation mode that affords theoretical downlink data rates of up to 14 Mbit/s, a theoretical value under laboratory conditions. In actual practice, though, downlink rates per subscriber will still range between 2-3Mbps.
HSDPA is an element of Release 5 of the WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiplex) specifications. This new UMTS performance feature contains a transfer format called “high-speed downlink shared channel”.
Consumers will notice HSDPA in the form of a significantly better quality of service. Performance will be considerably improved, for example, in connection with downloads, Internet access or access to enterprise networks.