Qualcomm and Teleepoch Enter Into a 3G CDMA Subscriber Unit License Agreement, October 6, 2007

MTN chooses Cambridge Broadband Networks for multi-service wireless network in Rwanda, October 6, 2007

Brazilian government to publish 3G bidding rules soon, October 6, 2007

KTF 3G service suffers from technical problems, October 6, 2007

Argentina’s Personal lunches 3G service in Rosario, October 6, 2007

Russia has it's first 3G network, October 6, 2007

AT&T could drop Alcatel-Lucent as 3G mobile network supplier, October 6, 2007

Enea Extends License Agreement with ZTE for 3G Handsets, October 2, 2007

LG to unveil premium handsets in Brazil, October 2, 2007

KTF 3G subscribers doubled in less than 3 months, October 2, 2007

3G policy in India will be non-uniform, October 2, 2007

- previous news

Upgrading to HSDPA more than just software

June 28, 2005

The GSM world is looking to HSDPA to increase downlink cellular bandwidth, first because of the high data rates required to transfer advanced multimedia to the handset, and also because HSDPA reduces the cost/megabyte of transmission to less than half that of 3G WCDMA. There is one more reason, which is competitive: the CDMA world already offers close to 1Mbps through EV-DO, and it could reach 3.1Mbps with the Rev A version.

How easy will the upgrade to HSDPA be? The conventional wisdom is that it's just an easy software update. There is some truth to this: 3G infrastructure installed since 2002 was designed with HSDPA in mind and therefore will be software-upgradeable.

But according to ABI Research's principal analyst of semiconductor research, Alan Varghese, "Just like Yogi's logic on baseball, the transition to HSDPA will require more than just software at the base station." Some infrastructure will require hardware additions such as channel cards, traffic processing units and backplane modifications to handle the increased capacity and throughput of HSDPA.

And the client side is definitely more than just software. Hardware in the form of advanced baseband chipsets will be required to handle the high data throughput while consuming little power; diversity receive circuitry may be required to handle the 16-QAM of HSDPA; and increased handset memory will also be needed. Lastly, as a reminder, EDGE was supposed to be an easy software upgrade from GSM/GPRS, but it still took the industry a couple of years to sort through all the issues with testing, interoperability with different vendors, and roaming to other cellular protocols.

ABI Research's study, "HSDPA - Mobile Broadband" discusses all these issues in detail. In addition it examines the drivers for HSDPA, the deployment schedules of operators, and the timelines and volumes for HSDPA Infrastructure, PC Cards, Handsets, and ICs.