Battle of the bandwidths: Huawei v Telstra on HSDPA 'speed record'

Stuart Corner
Monday, 03 August 2009 09:03

Business IT - Technology

Huawei claims to have recorded the fastest downlink speeds on a HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access) commercial network of 18.2Mbps, yet Telstra claims a world record 21Mbps. So what's the story?

In February when Telstra launched HSPA services on its 3G network operating at the theoretical maximum downstream bandwidth of 21Mbps it claimed the network had been recognised by Guinness World Records. According to Telstra, Next G had been "declared the world's fastest national mobile broadband network by the Guinness World Records after turning up the peak network speeds to a blistering 21 Mbps."

And Telstra quoted Australian representative of the Guinness World Records, Chris Sheedy, declaring Telstra's achievement as "phenomenal and a real win for everyday Australians and Australian businesses." GWR however does not seem to have been sufficiently impressed with the achievement to post it to its website http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com where the conditions under which the record had been achieved would no doubt have been given in considerable detail. And iTWire's attempts to get Telstra to be more specific met with little success.

Some time ago we asked Telstra: "Can you tell me what exactly the Guinness World Record specifies: is it for the published maximum speed of 21Mbps or for some lower speed achieved in a practical test overseen by GWR, and if so, what was this speed?" Telstra assured us that the record was for "achieved peak network downlink speeds of 21Mbps," but provided no details as to the conditions of this test.

This has left the way clear for Huawei to claim "the fastest downlink speeds on a HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access) commercial network," with a mere 18.2Mbps. The difference between this and Telstra's rather vague claim is that Huawei is rather more specific. This throughput was achieved on "the commercial network of Singapore info-communications provider, StarHub," which was able to "deliver a single-user desktop downlink speed of 18.2Mbps."

In other words the terminal was (a) not moving and (b) did not have to share available capacity on the base station with another user. What Huawei has not told us is whether the desktop used a standard commercial antenna and whether it was in a commercially realistic situation: ie in an office and not on a rooftop with unimpeded line of site to the base station on the same rooftop.

It's all pretty academic really. Real users in a real world on a real network have Buckley's of getting throughputs anywhere near these rates. Still it gives Huawei CTO Peter Rossi the chance to tout his company's credentials, and no doubt annoy Telstra's network supplier, rival manufacturer Ericsson by saying: "Recognising the Australian market's interest in HSPA+, we would be open to providing equivalent services to our local customers, should the opportunity arise."

I'm sure he would and I'm sure Huawei is more than capable of doing so. Just don't expect "equivalent services" to mean bandwidths anywhere near 18.2Mbps in the real world.