What's after HSDPA?

flaka

Hi,
I’m looking at mobile broadband. One concern I have is being in a contract when the next technology comes out. Can anyone tell me what’s the expected life of HSDPA based “mobile broadband”?

12-month contract from O2 - will it be old tech in 12 months?

What is likely to be offered after this?
Will they be able to up the speed of HSDPA?

Thanks
Flaka

degsie

vhsdpa?

Shiny

No it wont.
Wi-MAX is the only possible replacement but you wont
see a large deployment of this technology within the time
of your contract.

jesus_thats_gre

Doubt it will be wimax.. The next move will be hsupa.. After that, you will see speeds increase to 28.8mbps.. In order for more than 1 person in 10 squad miles to use the service, you will see far more base stations deployed.

After that, it is that that next generation evolution..

smellslikeshoes

Hspda in its current form can provide "up to" 14.4Mbit, the important part being up to of course. I don't know if it will be an old technology in 12 months or even if the current speeds will be upped by the providers, but the technology is definitely evolving pretty quickly. Expect HSUPA in the next year or so, which will give better upload speeds. After that it should progress on to Evolved HSPA in the next few years which will do up to 42Mbit down 22Mbit up. Then maybe HSOPA in the next 5 or 6 years which will be able to do 100 Mbit/s for downlink and 50 Mbit/s for uplink. I wouldn't worry about it getting over shadowed by anything else here for the foreseeable future at least, though its possible thats digiwebs Flash-OFDM based mobile broadband will be a serious contender depending on how aggressive their rollout plans are.

lmimmfn

LTE is next - http://gigaom.com/2008/02/22/dreaming-of-wireless-broadband/
Just hope the pings are improved

Onikage

Faster HSDPA/variants then LTE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP

watty

HSUPA is just a variant of HSDPA. It's not going to make much difference except for VOIP and upload

D = Download U = Upload

The next stage for phone companies is LTE & HSOPA. About 20Mbps, lower latency and more consistant. But maybe over 5 years away or more.

Fixed WiMax is here now and simply allows more users and range on 3.5GHz FWALA licences. Users would mostly not know if on pre-Wimax or Fixed WiMax.

Mobile WiMax was overhyped. In speed / range comparing same power & spectrum it's not much different to where Digiweb's pilot deployment a year ago of Flash-OFDM was. It has problems with base station handover. The US Mobile deployment (1st commercial MOBILE version of WiMax, all others have been fixed or nomadic) is Clearwire / Motorola 2.5GHz which is poor coverage due to frequency.

WiMax is a means for Intel/Motorola to sell to ISPs. By and large traditional Mobile Phone operators are not going to deploy.

The new 700Mhz in USA is going to be entirely HSDPA, not WiMax.

Slovakia, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Finland have tested or deployed the FLASH-OFDM on 450Mhz or 900Mhz bands that Digiweb are rolling out. The Modem has two receivers so one can scan for other bases.

Since the phone networks have not finished HSxPA cycle of upgrade on 3G and NokiaSiemensNetworks have just launched a 596Kbps version of 240kbps "ish" EDGE for GSM upgrades (SW only!), don't expect any US or European rollout of LTE anytime soon.

Even LTE only achieves the same bits/Hz as current WiMax and Flash-OFDM. It "seems" faster because the design assumes 20MHz allocations rather than the 1.25MHz or 4MHz used by Flash-OFDM or 5MHz used by WiMax!

Mobile Internet is never going to be as good as fixed Internet. By the time Mobile can do Metro/DSL/Cable speeds as a MINIMUM rather than optimistic "up to", the Fixed market will be x10 faster or more. A mobile system can never ensure a safe level of contention as a Fixed system can.

crawler

Verizon and Voda have backed LTE - therefore it's LTE.

LTE is probably not the best 4G technology but it will become the defacto standard.

lmimmfn

crawler wrote: »

Verizon and Voda have backed LTE - therefore it's LTE.

LTE is probably not the best 4G technology but it will become the defacto standard.

I agree, WiMax is pretty much dead in the water. Not only that, but the operators like Nokia, Ericsson etc. have agreed last week to allow use of each others patents for use in LTE via fixed licensing costs

jesus_thats_gre

crawler wrote: »

Verizon and Voda have backed LTE - therefore it's LTE.

LTE is probably not the best 4G technology but it will become the defacto standard.

Read an interview with Sarin just last week saying that they haven't backed it just yet as there is quite a few things that they weren't satisfied with. It is inevitable that they will do but nothing has been signed yet.

lmimmfn

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

Read an interview with Sarin just last week saying that they haven't backed it just yet as there is quite a few things that they weren't satisfied with. It is inevitable that they will do but nothing has been signed yet.

I can tell ya that the large telecoms firms have backed it

Alun

[cynic mode]
Whatever it is, it will, like all new technologies be overhyped in the beginning, never quite live up to it's expectations, and then just as it starts to mature and actually be vaguely usable be replaced by the next "latest thing". Rinse and repeat.
[/cynic mode]

watty

lmimmfn wrote: »

I agree, WiMax is pretty much dead in the water. Not only that, but the operators like Nokia, Ericsson etc. have agreed last week to allow use of each others patents for use in LTE via fixed licensing costs

No, WiMax is not at all dead. Very successful as Fixed Wireless and will be a Niche for some operators for Mobile/Nomadic. But not giant leap forward foretold!

crawler

Alun wrote: »

[cynic mode]
Whatever it is, it will, like all new technologies be overhyped in the beginning, never quite live up to it's expectations, and then just as it starts to mature and actually be vaguely usable be replaced by the next "latest thing". Rinse and repeat.
[/cynic mode]

Correct. big bun fights between the vendors will water it down - qualcomm tried to do this with UMB, thnakfully LTE won the race (or is winning)

Big MNOs only using Wimax card to make LTE guys make kit faster....."ooohhh....we will go Wimax if you dont get your price points down and the like...." they are right to do this too.

LTE and Wimax are linked for TDD at the lower frequency end too so Wimax is not dead and in fact it all may form part of the same ecosystem ultimately.