Chinese vendor Huawei today announced the global availability of its high-speed downlink packet access (HDSPA) technology, a key element in the company’s strategy to build up its UMTS portfolio.

In June, Huawei conducted HSDPA trials with Telfort’s trial UMTS network in the Netherlands. The vendor, however, is now ready to commercially release its entire HSDPA product line, which includes its upgraded UMTS node B base stations, larger capacity radio network controllers (RNC), gateway GPRS support nodes (GGSN) and serving GPRS support nodes (SGSN) for HSDPA’s added capacity, which has a theoretical ceiling of 14.4 Mb/s over a 5 MHz downstream carrier. Huawei is also releasing an HSDPA data card, but no HSDPA handsets were announced.

The race for HSDPA is heating up as several carriers have announced trials in Europe, Asia and Europe. But Cingular so far is the first carrier to turn on a live commercial network, announcing last week that it has upgraded three of its former AT&T UMTS networks to HSDPA. However, while the HSDPA-enhanced infrastructure is carrying all data and voice traffic, the carrier has yet to release any handsets or data cards that take advantage of the new higher throughputs.