Just as the hype over W-CDMA is subsiding, the industry is shifting gears to another protocol.
Known as High Speed Downlink Packet Access, the technology is the focus of major operators in the search to differentiate themselves in new Internet Protocol-backed applications and services.
It’s a hot topic with operators, said Janne Laasko, director of HSDPA business program with Nokia Corp., adding “it will be the big thing next year” in North America, Europe and Japan.
With the FCC approval of its merger with AT&T Wireless Services Inc., Cingular Wireless L.L.C. will do battle with Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS to maintain its new leadership position. Cingular may want to sell its W-CDMA services against the other two major carriers’ EV-DO offerings. This will probably bring HSDPA into play for Cingular as the CDMA players look to install EV-DV technology on their networks.
Major infrastructure players also have begun trials to showcase their unique offerings to carriers. Although chipsets and handsets are not ready, major vendors look to commercial deployment in the second half of next year.
“That’s a bit aggressive,” commented Ozgur Aytar, senior analyst with Pyramid Research, adding that carriers “are just coming out of their initial runs of UMTS investments.” She does not expect deployment until late 2006.
She also noted that the United States and Japan will witness the first flush of services because they are battlegrounds for CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO and UMTS. Laasko said data cards will precede handsets to the market.
In Japan, NTT DoCoMo Inc. may duel KDDI Corp., which has enlisted subscribers in furious numbers during the past year. Aytar believes DoCoMo may blaze the deployment trail for HSDPA. The carrier was the first to implement UMTS technology.
Chipset makers planning to participate in the space include Qualcomm Inc., L.M. Ericsson, Motorola Inc., LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics.
Lucent Technologies Inc. said it is conducting trials with Cingular and demonstrated the technology at PT Expo last week in Beijing. Nortel Networks Ltd. also said it is conducting its own demonstrations.
“The resolution was incredible,” exalted Alan Pritchard, vice president of marketing for GSM/UMTS for Nortel. His company demonstrated the technology on a plasma screen showing one of the Harry Potter movies. Generally, the company has been quiet about its offerings.
“We just don’t want to make any noise yet,” Pritchard said, adding Nortel wants to be sure of the quality of the various features like video streaming, music downloads as well as wireless business and data.
Other vendors like Nokia, Siemens AG and Ericsson claim to have HSDPA offerings and roadmaps for bringing them to the market.
But HSDPA is no lone ranger. Another protocol known as enhanced uplink is expected to follow within a year, during 2006. While HSDPA handles network-to-terminal traffic, the enhanced uplink conveys traffic from the handset to the network. It is also known as High Speed Uplink Packet Access or Enhanced Uplink Dedicated Channel. The Third Generation Partnership Project is still working on the standard.
All vendors agree that the availability of chipsets and handsets will determine how quickly the carriers deploy the technology.
In the meantime, each of the manufacturers is figuring out how to differentiate themselves. However, where one vendor claims an edge, it seems another vendor quickly claims the same advantage.
“We don’t have anything to compare with,” remarked Andreas Hessler, director of business strategy and business development for W-CDMA at Ericsson. “It’s hard to say.” But he said his company’s products will guarantee low risk of dropped calls, great output power and reliability, and excellent indoor coverage.
One area of differentiation may be speed to market. Most of the participants want to be the first to unveil their products.
Pritchard said his company’s competence in spread spectrum, which is the foundation of both CDMA and UMTS technologies, gives Nortel an edge over some of the competition. Lucent also claims the same advantage.
End-to-end service is another area all the vendors hope to provide.
Lucent said its offering will also differentiate it by bundling a variety of technologies, including Wi-Fi, WiMAX and Voice over IP within its Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem. This will create seamless and intuitive services and applications for end users without prejudice to the access technology or application on the handset, according to John Marinho, vice president for strategic marketing and analysis. He explained that Lucent uses softswitch that leverages both landline and wireless, creating a seamless connection experience and low latency.
“Others have purposed softswitch for wireless,” he said.
According to all the players, the evolution to HSDPA technology requires only a software upgrade. Unlike W-CDMA, which has speed of 384 kilobits per second, HSDPA is expected to provide between 1.8 megabits per second and 14.4 mbps. But at the initial launch, carriers will provide about 2 mbps. Nortel, however, is demonstrating its product with 3.6 mbps, according to Pritchard.
Hessler explained that the speed an end user gets will sometimes depend on where he or she is located. In certain areas where traffic is light, the throughput may be high, he said.
