Cingular Wireless and Lucent Technologies today announced a four-year agreement for nationwide 3G service rollout. The deployment also includes an enhanced version of UMTS technology, called High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which will ultimately support theoretical maximum peak data speeds of up to 14.4 Megabits per second (Mbps).
Beginning in 2005, the new UMTS/HSDPA network will allow Cingular to offer a wide variety of multimedia services for consumers, such as high-speed downloads of video clips of films, sporting and entertainment events, and advanced multi-player video gaming, and provide its business customers with services such as mobile broadband Internet access. Analysts have estimated that Cingular, which completed its $41 billion purchase of AT&T Wireless in October, could spend about $1 billion a year over the next few years to upgrade its network.
HSDPA employs several technological advances, including higher-order modulation; adaptive modulation and coding; physical layer feedback of the momentary channel condition; and a new transport channel type known as high-speed downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH) that allows several users to share the air interface channel.
Customers using the UMTS network can expect to receive average data connections between 400-700 Kilobits per second (Kbps), claims Cingular, with bursts to several Mbps on capable devices.
Lucent’s UMTS equipment supports HSDPA with a software-only upgrade. It will be deployed in both the 1900 and 850 Megahertz spectrum bands, and will interoperate with Cingular’s existing GSM/GPRS/EDGE network.
Lucent will provide Cingular with a wide array of products including Lucent’s Flexent One base stations (Node Bs), which support HSDPA and will be broadly deployed across Cingular’s network.
Cingular Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless telephone company, said on Tuesday it would also use 3G gear from Ericsson and Siemens.
The GSM world has moved from the typical 40Kbps of GPRS to the 130Kbps of EDGE, and is now moving towards the 384Kbps of UMTS. Though UMTS is supposed to represent the 3G Promised Land for GSM carriers, an upgrade has recently been proposed; High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Soon the upcoming 3Mbps HSDPA software upgrade to UMTS, could make cellular a de-facto mobile broadband for voice and data.
On the CDMA side, 1XEV-DO Rev. A has an uplink speed of 1.8 Mbps with 3.1 Mbps downstream, making it possible to send voice packets with header information and not cause degradation of voice quality. Although no U.S. CDMA carrier has announced that it was testing or planning to migrate to Revison A.
Verizon Wireless Chief Technical Officer Dick Lynch said at CTIA Wireless 2004 that it was possible the company would continue on its EV-DO path and perhaps at some point offer a type of voice service over their EV-DO service (above).
WiMax will also be able to do voice communications through Voice-over-IP. The 802.16e extension will make it mobile. Cellular carriers and WiMAX ISPs may soon find themselves locked in competition for the same customers, according to new analysis by ABI Research.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Cingular/AT&T Merger Approved, 3G in Dallas & San Diego, Cellular VoIP?, Cellular & WiMax Collide Says ABI, Sprint Plans National EV-DO Service, Cingular 3G Details and Cellular At The Races.
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