WHEN CINGULAR WIRELESS launched commercial service over its high-speed downlink packet access overlay in December 2005, it became the first carrier in the Western Hemisphere to do so and only the second one worldwide, after O2's Manx Telecom on the Isle of Man.

Since December, at least four more HSDPA networks have launched commercially. According to Informa Telecoms & Media's World Cellular Information Service, the other service providers at the HSDPA party include Mobilkom Austria, Mobiltel in Bulgaria, Optimus in Portugal and Watinaya Telecom in Kuwait. Although that number is admittedly low, during the rest of 2006, the industry likely will see this much-talked-about upgrade to wideband-CDMA/UMTS networks take a giant commercial leap.

The indicators start with the publicized plans of the carriers themselves. Dozens other network operators worldwide — including Belgacom Mobile, China Mobile, Hutchison 3G, KTF in South Korea, Rogers Wireless, SK Telecom and T-Mobile International — have announced that they have HSDPA deployment projects under way.

In addition, as attendees of last month's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, found out, Cingular and others that have already launched will soon be expanding their networks. Ericsson, Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks all announced separately at the Barcelona event that they are supplying Cingular with network equipment for its HSDPA expansion. Meanwhile, Vodafone, which has several HSDPA market launches in the works, said it will use Ericsson's gear on its network in Germany. Also, Cingular said at 3GSM that it is encouraging roaming among HSDPA-enabled networks with the addition of the tri-band Option GlobeTrotter GT MAX LaptopConnect card to its GlobalConnect services. Believed to be the first such device available, the card works at 850 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.1 GHz, the frequencies at which most UMTS/HSDPA networks are being deployed. It also provides Wi-Fi network access.

“The need for broadband connections continues to move from our offices and living rooms to almost anywhere in the world,” said Kris Rinne, chief technology officer for Cingular Wireless, in a statement announcing the tri-band card. “As more GSM carriers upgrade to UMTS and HSDPA, we see ourselves becoming the travel agents for 3G worldwide.”

Devine Kofiloto, principal analyst and manager of Informa's wireless research team, said earlier this month in a research statement that rapid uptake of HSDPA services depends on progressive flat-rate, unlimited-usage service plans.

“Mobile operators have, to date, resisted moving to flat-rate models, but if mobile operators really aspire to the data traffic volumes of the fixed world, they must also recognize the factors that have so successfully underpinned growth for fixed broadband providers,” he said.

Aside from service-level indicators of future HSDPA growth, technology capability also is giving the mobile industry reason to believe HSDPA is ready for primetime. Ericsson is among the vendors that recently demonstrated HSDPA performance at 3.6 Mb/s, twice as fast as what is currently available and closer to the theoretical potential of 14.4 Mb/s, said Mikael Stromquist, executive vice president of strategy and marketing for North America at Ericsson. Although HSDPA data rates run higher, he said, “the bandwidth rate is only one of the benefits. Another is the low latency. We are working latency down toward eventually 30 milliseconds and 6 Mb/s in the uplink.”

3.6

Data rate of 3.6 Mb/s is highest publicly tested HSDPA rate so far

25

Number of commercial HSDPA-enabled devices launched so far

70

Number of network operators globally that have “confirmed interest” in deploying HSDPA systems

102

Number of operators that have commercially launched HSDPA predecessor W-CDMA

Source: GSA, www.gsacom.com