3G wireless broadband moving to 112Mbps

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 14 February 2010 11:41

Business IT - Technology

Telstra will be one of the first operators in the world to offer a commercial HSPA data service at 42Mbps maximum downlink bandwidth, but Nokia Siemens is touting the next evolution of the technology offering up to 112Mbps.

Nokia Siemens promises to demonstrate, at Media World Congress in Barcelona this week "an HSPA+ data call with a peak throughput of 112Mbps...using four base station radio transceivers, or 'carriers', simultaneously for one data connection."

The standard for this service will be specified in 3GPP Release 10, whch is due to be finalised in March 2011. Nokia Siemens says network infrastructure supporting HSPA+ at 112Mbps is expected to be commercially available by 2011 and says that "Nokia Siemens Networks' Flexi base stations and radio network controller can support four-carrier HSPA with a simple software upgrade."

LTE promises higher bandwidths, up to 160Mbps but requires 20MHz of contiguous spectrum to achieve this. HSPA+ will achieve its 112Mbps by using four carriers in the existing 5MHz bands of spectrum used in today's mobile networks.

The technology will enable carriers to offer higher bandwidths to individual users but will do little to alleviate congestion in the current spectrum, and by enabling higher data rates will only exacerbate congestion problems if implemented.

However, according to Nokia Siemens, "By balancing data traffic between the four carriers on the downlink connection, multi-carrier technology enables better speeds, better use of base station resources, and higher spectrum efficiency.