September
09, 2009
Bellevue, WA
“Driven by global
deployments of HSPA mobile broadband, we are approaching the dawn of a
new
decade that will bring many mobile broadband innovations to diverse new
consumer and enterprise markets,” stated Peter Rysavy, President of
Rysavy
Research and author of the white paper published today by 3G Americas.
The
white paper, HSPA to LTE-Advanced: 3GPP Broadband Evolution to
IMT-Advanced
(4G), discusses the 3GPP evolution of EDGE, HSPA and LTE, their
capabilities and their positions relative to other primary competing
technologies and how these technologies fit into the ITU roadmap that
leads to
IMT-Advanced.
Rysavy
added, “3G technology has shown us the power and potential of
always-on,
everyplace network connectivity and has ignited a massive wave of
industry
innovation that spans devices, applications, Internet integration and
new
business models. Providing the powerful foundation of networking
technologies
is the GSM family – EDGE,
HSPA and, in
the near future, LTE – which
is leading
innovations and realization of global mobile broadband.”
The
following are some of the important observations and conclusions of the
report:
With
a customer base of 4 billion connections today, the GSM family of
technologies
is available on nearly 800 networks in 219 countries worldwide.
Building on
this base, UMTS-HSPA – the world’s dominant mobile broadband technology
today –
has proven to be the most widely deployed and adopted 3G technology of
all
time, with more than 352 operators in
various stages
of deployment, including 277 commercial HSPA networks in 116 countries.
“Mobile
broadband connectivity, already used by hundreds of millions of people,
is on
the verge of becoming ubiquitous in many parts of the world,” stated
Chris
Pearson, President of 3G Americas. According to Informa Telecoms &
Media,
there were an estimated 377 million UMTS-HSPA subscriptions as of
August 2009,
and by 2014, the number is expected to grow to 2.7 billion.
The
white paper explains the tremendous opportunity afforded to GSM-HSPA
operators
via the 3GPP roadmap to HSPA+. While OFDMA systems such as LTE and
WiMAX have
attracted a great amount of attention, evolving HSPA to exploit
available radio
technologies can significantly enhance its performance capabilities and
extend
the life of sizable operator HSPA infrastructure investments.
Techniques
include advanced receivers, MIMO, Continuous Packet Connectivity,
Higher-Order
Modulation and One Tunnel Architecture, many of which are included in
the
standardization of 3GPP Release 7 and Release 8.
Depending
on the features implemented, HSPA+ can exceed the capabilities of IEEE
802.16e-2005 (Mobile WiMAX Release-1) in the same amount of spectrum.
Beyond
the peak data rate of 42 Mbps for HSPA+ in Release 8 (with 2X2 MIMO, DL
64 QAM
and UL 16 QAM), Release 9 may specify 2X2 MIMO in combination with
dual-carrier
operation, which would further boost peak theoretical downlink network
rates to
84 Mbps. In addition to the increased speeds, HSPA+ also will more than
double
HSPA capacity and has the potential of reducing latency to below 25
milliseconds.
HSPA
and HSPA+ will continue to dominate mobile broadband subscriptions
worldwide
for the remainder of this decade and well into the next. However,
announcements
have already begun in support of the next 3GPP evolutionary step, LTE.
Trials
and deployments of LTE will begin in 2010 by leading operators
including
AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, Verizon and
Vodafone. In
fact, today there are more than 2 billion subscriptions represented by
combining the total existing customer bases of the more than 100
operators,
both GSM and CDMA operators, who have announced indications of their
intention
to deploy LTE networks.
The
deployment of LTE and its coexistence with UMTS-HSPA will be analogous
to the
deployment of UMTS-HSPA and its coexistence with GSM-EDGE.
“LTE
is the future toolkit for success for GSM and CDMA operators because it
will
provide higher speeds, lower latency, greater spectral efficiency and a
flatter
core network architecture than any other wireless technology,” Rysavy
concluded.
Informa
Telecoms & Media predicts that by 2014, UMTS-HSPA and LTE
subscriptions
will total 2.8 billion – 84.25 percent of the global total
including
147 million LTE connections. Mobile WiMAX is expected to have a total
of 89
million subscriptions by 2014.
“The
future for LTE mobile broadband is clear and well-defined,” Pearson
said. “In a
forthcoming 3GPP standards release, LTE-Advanced will meet the
requirements of
IMT- Advanced, a project led this year by the ITU that officially
defined the
requirements of IMT-Advanced.”
The white paper, HSPA to LTE-Advanced: 3GPP Broadband
Evolution to IMT-Advanced
(4G), as well
its
accompanying slide presentation, was created collaboratively with
Rysavy Research by the member organizations of 3G Americas and is
available for
free download at 3G Americas’ website: www.3gamericas.org.
Glossary of Terms
About 3G Americas: Unifying
the Americas through Wireless
Technology
3G Americas is an industry
trade organization composed of
telecommunications service providers and manufacturers. The
organization's
mission is to promote, facilitate and advocate for the deployment of
the GSM
family of technologies including LTE throughout the Americas. 3G
Americas has
contributed to the successful commercial rollout of GSM across the
Americas and
its place as the number one technology in the region, as well as the
global
adoption of EDGE. The organization aims to develop the expansive
wireless
ecosystem of networks, devices, and applications enabled by GSM and its
evolution to LTE. 3G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington,
with an
office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas, Texas. More
information
is available at www.3gamericas.org.
3G Americas' Board of Governors members
include Alcatel-Lucent, América Móvil,
AT&T, Andrew Solutions, Cable & Wireless, Ericsson, Gemalto,
Huawei,
HP, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, Openwave, Research in
Motion
(RIM), Rogers, T-Mobile USA and Telefónica.
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