Mobile broadband is becoming a reality, as the Internet generation grows accustomed to having broadband access wherever they go, and not just at home or in the office. Out of the estimated 1.8 billion people who will have broadband by 2012, some two-thirds will be mobile broadband consumers - and the majority of these will be served by HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks. 

In Australia alone, the number of mobile broadband connections tripled in 2008, and mobile broadband now makes up almost a quarter of total broadband connections.  Globally, there are over 6 million new HSPA subscriptions added every month.

People can already browse the Internet or send e-mails using HSPA-enabled notebooks, replace their fixed DSL modems with HSPA modems or USB dongles, and send and receive video or music using 3G/HSPA-enabled phones. With LTE, the user experience will be even better. It will further enhance more demanding applications like interactive TV, mobile video blogging, advanced games or professional services. LTE offers several important benefits for consumers and operators, specifically:

• Performance and capacity
• Simplicity
• Wide range of terminals

In summary, operators can introduce LTE flexibly to match their existing network, spectrum and business objectives for mobile broadband to support rich, interactive multimedia communication and entertainment services.  Already, 31 operators globally have already commited to deployment of LTE, with the first commerical services launching in 2010.


LTE Technical Resources

LTE whitepaper
What is LTE & how does it work?

Key features of the LTE radio interface
This article presents some of the key features of the radio interface for LTE (long-term evolution), recently approved by 3GPP. LTE enables unprecedented performance in terms of peak data rates, delay, and spectrum efficiency. The authors discuss spectrum flexibility, multi-antenna technologies, scheduling, link adaptation, power control, and retransmission handling.

Initial field performance measurements of LTE
Researchers have measured the performance of LTE in the field using different drive routes and radio channel environments. Among other things, they measured different bandwidths, different antenna configurations and layer-1, UDP and TCP throughput using two kinds of terminals.

Smart Simplicity in radio network management
Greater emphasis in recent years on simplified network management is in line with other efforts in the wireless industry to streamline operations and reduce costs. Network management encompasses common operator tasks such as planning, dimensioning, deploying, configuring and optimizing a cellular network. The authors describe the rationale behind this trend and introduce Ericsson’s Smart Simplicity concept, which focuses on means of increasing automation in today’s increasingly complex networks in order to reduce operating expenses.

EDGE, HSPA and LTE Broadband Innovation White Paper: 3G Americas; Rysavy Research
This report provides a good overview of different wireless broadband technologies, including comparative performance and evolution paths.