EDGE, HSPA and LTE Continue to Lead and Innovate Mobile Broadband

(Top News, 4 Sep 2008)

UMTS/HSPA has exploited tremendous innovation to deliver capabilities on a global scale never achieved by any other technology, offering operators key technical and business advantages, according to Peter Rysavy, President of Rysavy Research and author of the white paper, "EDGE, HSPA and LTE Broadband Innovation", published by 3G Americas. "Because of the practical benefits and deployment momentum, the migration path from EDGE to HSPA then to LTE is inevitable. Benefits include the ability to roam globally, huge economies of scale, widespread acceptance by operators, complementary services such as messaging and multimedia and an astonishing variety of competitive handsets and other devices," Rysavy continues.

Among the key findings of the white paper are the following:
- GSM/UMTS has an overwhelming global position in terms of subscribers, deployment, and services. Its success will marginalize other wide-area wireless technologies.
- In current deployments, HSPA users regularly experience throughput rates well in excess of 1Mbps, under favorable conditions, on both downlinks and uplinks. Planned enhancements will increase these peak user-achievable throughput rates, with 4Mbps on commercial networks being commonly measured.
- HSPA Evolution (HSPA+) provides a strategic performance roadmap advantage for incumbent GSM/UMTS operators. HSPA+ with 2x2 MIMO, successive interference cancellation, and 64 QAM is more spectrally efficient than competing technologies including WiMAX Wave 2 with 2x2 MIMO and EV-DO Rev B.
- The LTE RAN technical specification was approved in January 2008 and is being incorporated into 3GPP Release 8, which is close to completion. Initial deployments are likely to occur around 2010. The 3GPP OFDMA approach used in LTE matches or exceeds the capabilities of any other OFDMA system.
- LTE has become the technology platform of choice as GSM/UMTS and CDMA/EV-DO operators are making strategic long-term decisions on their next-generation platforms. In June of 2008, after extensive evaluation, LTE was the first and only technology recognized by the NGMN alliance to meet its broad requirements.

Building on a customer base exceeding 3.3 billion connections today including an estimated 251.5 million UMTS/HSPA mobile broadband subscriptions (September 2008), the GSM family of technologies is available on 750 networks in 218 countries of the world. EDGE is commercial on 350 networks and UMTS has proven to be the most widely deployed 3G technology with more than 290 operators in various stages of deployment in 120 countries, of which 211 operators in 90 countries have upgraded to HSDPA services and continue network improvements to HSPA. Announcements have already begun in support of the next 3GPP evolutionary step to LTE, including trials and anticipated deployments, by the world's most prominent operators including AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, Verizon and Vodafone. In fact, combining the existing customer bases of the 20 or so operators, both GSM and CDMA operators, who have announced intentions to follow the LTE migration strategy, there are more than a billion connections represented today within their networks.

"It is EDGE/HSPA/LTE that provides one of the most robust portfolios of mobile-broadband technologies, and it is an optimum framework for realizing the potential of this market," concludes Rysavy.

Click here to download the white paper "EDGE, HSPA and LTE Broadband Innovation"

Click here for more information on Rysavy Research