HSDPA: You may not know it, but you want it

HSDPA: You may not know it, but you want it

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, zatni@cbn.net.id

Earlier this month, three Indonesian journalists including myself took a ride in a specially equipped Mercedes Benz van. We all sat facing two pairs of large LCD monitors fixed on a frame in the back of the vehicle.

We were driving around Ericsson's South East Asian headquarters in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, where a High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) tower had been erected.

In the van, there was a computer and a transceiver. An official from Ericsson Malaysia was showing us the speeds at which data could be sent back and forth from the van to the central system inside the building. It was impressive.

Downloading a 10 megabyte file took only around 35 seconds. Try that over your Kabelvision cable TV broadband network, and on an extraordinarily good day it would take around 20 minutes -- plenty of time for a quick nap. Downloading a one-minute MP3 file takes only a little over four seconds via the current revision of HSDPA.

The official from Ericsson also showed how we could watch three separate streaming videos without experiencing any annoying pauses. Once the video files were buffered, we could watch them as if we were watching a DVD movie. The video is of high- definition quality, of course. We were also able to see Stockholm through a webcam that had been placed there. Needless to say, it was already dark in Stockholm.

Contending technologies

There is more than one way to skin a cat, as the proverb says, and there is also more than one way to get broadband access. You can use fixed-wireline infrastructure such as the cable TV network, xDSL or fiber-to-home networks, but this will keep you tethered to a broadband modem

This is a proposition that is no longer attractive to most people -- the last-mile problem still poses a barrier to rapid network expansion.

Today if you want the freedom to move around as you work, not only inside your house but also at a client's office, you should choose mobile broadband access. It allows you to work anywhere there is coverage. One available option is to subscribe to the GPRS and EDGE services offered by GSM providers. The speed, unfortunately, is still painfully low.

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access) is a more feasible option. It offers a high data rate of up to 70 megabytes a second (Mbps).

The latest release, the IEEE 802.16e, meanwhile, allows for mobility, which means subscribers can move around in a wide area without getting disconnected from the network.

The 3G UMTS/WCDMA is another possibility. It offers cellular mobility and is available in a growing number of countries in Europe and Asia and in the U.S. It offers data speed of up to 384 kilobytes per second -- much higher than what I could get on my cable TV network. However, it is still very low for today's user demand.

HSDPA, which is a software upgrade to 3G equipment, has a lot of promise. First, 3G operators will not require a separate network to get this service. Second, it has a short latency, which means that the signals take a short time to travel to and from the network. This will improve response time. Third, the next release of HSDPA standard will have a data speed of up to 14 Mbps. Fourth, it already has a clear technology roadmap.

Next year, for example, Ericsson expects that Phase 2 of HSDPA and Phase 1 of Enhanced Uplink will be completed. The standard will deliver 14 Mbps downlink and 1.8 Mbps uplink speed. In 2007, according to the company, Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) will be completed, allowing content providers to pump TV programs to multiple users.

If the current 2 Mbps speed showcased during Ericsson's live demo in Cyberjaya already allowed us to do so many things simultaneously, it would be hard to tell what applications will demand the 14 Mbps speed.

But these are not the only contenders. There is also the CDMA2000-1x EV-DO, which will compete as mobile broadband infrastructure. The promised data rate is 3.1 Mbps, and a plan for future development has not been made public yet. And there is Immarsat's Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN), although the half megabit speed may limit its attractiveness. It will be, however, a great alternative for a quick setup.

WiMAX's network is spreading quickly to many places around the world. With Intel Corp. as one of the main proponents of the standard, we will very soon see notebooks and other personal devices with built-in WiMAX chips.

However, HSDPA is also fast emerging as a serious contender. As announced by Carl-Henrik Svanberg, Ericsson's president and chief executive, at a recent shareholders meeting in Stockholm, 15 live HSDPA networks using his company's equipment were already being evaluated in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and America. In South Africa, Ericsson has been working with MTN to build the first 3G HSDPA network. Serving also as a fixed wireless broadband network as an alternative to the wireline ADSL, the HSDPA network will link fixed terminals in rural areas and help narrow the digital divide.

In the U.S., the Swedish company has also upgraded Cingular's 3G network in Dallas and Fort Worth by adding HSDPA. The network is now commercially operational. There are around a thousand people using HSDPA PC Cards to connect their notebooks to the Internet using the network today.

In Malaysia, Maxis, one of the country's 3G cellular operators, is expected to start offering commercial HSDPA service in the first quarter of next year.

Needless to say, at the moment operators and even Internet service providers must be having a tough time choosing which technology to bank on. Both contenders offer compelling arguments that technology is the best. However, for 3G operators it should be clear that HSDPA is the path to take. This route requires no new infrastructure -- a main reason for subscribers to sign up for 3G services.

And, if the Global Mobile Supplier Association report is correct, there are currently 100 3G WCDMA commercial networks in 42 countries in the world. It means that the HSDPA could already be enjoying a lead over the other technologies. If an operator already has a 3G WCDMA network, it can immediately implement HSDPA.