HSPA to Stay Even as 4G Nears, Companies Say
Operators worldwide are still expected to deploy HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access), a wireless broadband technology, even as they move aggressively to LTE, company officials told us. Meanwhile, AT&T plans to move from the current planned rollout of HSPA 7.2 to HSPA+, a spokesman said.
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Most GSM operators are expected to upgrade their existing HSPA networks to HSPA+, said Chris Pearson, president of 3G Americas, a trade group representing the GSM family of technologies. Most HSPA operators are in the middle of upgrade planning, he said. Even as carriers are moving fast to LTE, HSPA+ will stay for a while because it will take time for LTE to mature, said Arnon Friedmann, wireless strategic and marketing director at Texas Instruments. The infrastructure market is relatively slow-changing, he said, citing the slow adoption of 3G. The key for a vendor is to design chips that optimize existing technology while supporting new technology like LTE, he said. Flexibility needs to be built into the architecture to support multiple standards, he added. Qualcomm Senior Director of Product Management Peter Carson agreed, saying the plan is to have multimode devices because LTE will take several years to reach the same maturity as 3G. He expects LTE devices to be commercially available in the second half of the year.
Carriers have good reasons to do HSPA+ upgrades: There isn’t a dramatic performance difference between HSPA+ and LTE, said Danny Locklear, head of marketing for LTE Solutions at Alcatel-Lucent. Depending on a carrier’s infrastructure and vendor’s technology roadmap, HSPA+ could be a simple upgrade to today’s HSPA networks, protecting an operator’s investment in the network, Friedmann said. Furthermore, 4G spectrum hasn’t even come up for auction in many regions of the world, Pearson said. Many global operators are sitting on newer base stations that can more easily incorporate the HSPA+ software, he said. Those operators can’t afford to wait simply for LTE, Pearson said: Many have to wait at least until 4G spectrum becomes available. Meanwhile, they'll boost their network capacities by progressing through the iterations of HSPA, including HSPA+, he added. HSPA+ can also be a complementary technology when LTE covers the bulk of an operator’s network, Locklear said. Smooth compatibility is possible between HSPA+ and LTE, Pearson said. Operators may leverage the System Architecture Evolution/Evolved Packet Core planned for LTE, he said.
AT&T still plans to begin its LTE rollout in 2011, the spokesman said. But 3G will stay a long while, he emphasized. For less than $10 million, AT&T can upgrade its 3G network as it competes with other operators, he said. A wide variety of LTE devices for the general consumer, as opposed to early adopters, might not appear until a few years later, he said. While other carriers plan 4G deployment, T-Mobile USA is speeding ahead with HSPA+ deployments across the bulk of its 3G footprint this year, delivering 3-5 times the speed of today’s 3G, a spokeswoman said. The best thing about the upgrade is that HSPA+ is backward-compatible, she noted.