HSPA heaven and GPS goodness from Ericsson and Dell

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 16 May 2008 05:27

Opinion and Analysis

The trend towards building HSPA modems directly into laptops goes into overdrive as Ericsson launches a new HSPA and GPS equipped notebook module, with Dell the latest major international customer, after Lenovo earlier this year. Who needs dongles and cards, when built-in is better?

With WiMAX modules still yet to appear in Intel notebooks, and massive WiMAX networks still yet to be implemented worldwide beyond around 100 smaller WiMAX networks and trials, HSPA – or 3.5G high speed packet access networks – is the high speed network of choice for most of the world’s mobile workers.

Of course, Wi-Fi is available in many locations, including homes and offices, but for true ‘almost anywhere’ connectivity, at high speed, a 3.5G wireless modem, with both HSDPA and HSUPA – for high speed downloads and uploads – is essential.

The way that most people achieve this today is with either a PCMCIA/ExpressCard plug-in modem, or by using a USB wireless modem. Both solutions work wonderfully, but they require something to be plugged in and then stick out in some way, they can be broken, or lost.

Having something built-in may limit future upgradeability, but with laptops often being replaced within 2-3 years anyway, it’s not so big an issue – and with “up to” 7.2Mbps download speeds (and real-world speeds of 500Kbps to 3Mbps and faster), speed isn’t the issue for most on-the-road work, the real issue is the price of access charged by your carrier.

Now, internal 3G and 3.5G modules have been available in laptops for some time now, they’re definitely not new. But Ericsson has upgraded their modules to full HSPA speeds – presumably up to 7.2Mbps class download and up to 1.9Mbps class uploads – and have added a GPS module as well.

So, just as the latest mobile phones are packing at least an HSDPA module and GPS, so will all the latest notebooks that choose to include the Ericsson solution... at last!

Ericsson says that Dell will start offering the module in selected laptops from Q2 2008, which basically means... now.

Ericsson says that HSPA is the “world’s most widely deployed mobile broadband technology, with more than 185 commercially deployed networks available around the world serving more than one billion subscribers.”

So, what else do Ericsson and Dell have to say about this development, and their future plans? Please read onto page 2.