Over 70% global country penetration for HSPA

HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) mobile broadband systems are now commercially available in more than 70% of the world’s countries.

Alan Hadden, President, GSA said: “HSPA is by far and away the most successful mobile broadband system. Its commercial availability in 150 countries and territories is a significant milestone and has been achieved less than 5 years since the first HSPA network was launched.””

The path to mobile broadband began with 3G/WCDMA. According to a new report released by the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), over 99% of WCDMA operators have deployed and commercially launched HSPA.

HSPA is now commercially launched on 365 networks in 150 countries. When this figure is added to the number of networks currently in deployment or being planned, it takes the number of operators committed to HSPA network investments to 407 in 156 countries.

60% of HSPA networks support a peak downlink data rate of 7.2 Mbps or higher.

HSPA Evolution (HSPA+) is the next step on the roadmap. Widespread market acceptance of dongles, PCs with embedded HSPA connectivity, and smartphones are pushing data consumption to unprecedented levels. A related report from GSA now released shows how HSPA+ systems are meeting these challenging requirements and enabling operators to deliver an improved user experience with higher data capacities and user throughput, and reduced latency at lower cost. 127 HSPA+ network commitments in 59 countries provide the evidence, according to the GSA report.

73 HSPA+ networks are now commercially launched, in other words, by 1 in 5 HSPA operators:

* 60 commercial HSPA+ networks support a peak downlink data speed of 21 Mbps

* 8 commercial HSPA+ networks support a peak downlink data speed of 28 Mbps

* 5 commercial HSPA+ networks support a peak downlink data speed of 42 Mbps

GSA anticipates that around 100 HSPA+ systems will be commercially launched by end 2010.

42 Mbps HSPA+ is commercially reality on 5 networks which have deployed two 5 MHz carriers (DC-HSPA+). At least another 25 operators have committed to deploy 42 Mbps. Some operators have already committed to deploy 84 Mbps as a further evolution step.

Uplink speeds are also increasing. More than one third of HSPA operators have commercially introduced HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). A total of 124 operators have launched HSUPA in 63 countries, with a further 10 networks currently deploying the technology in an additional 4 markets. 51 HSUPA systems support a peak uplink data rate of 5.8 Mbps or higher.

The next evolutionary step in mobile broadband capacity will come with LTE, which has already been launched in Europe and the United States.

Both reports are available as free downloads from www.gsacom.com

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