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Attractive mass-market content such as sports and entertainment making use of the higher speed connections will soon reach mobile consumers across Europe. Mobile broadband continues to expand, as Swisscom Mobile announces its selection of HSDPA, 3 launches in Rome, and mobilkom austria introduces high-speed mobile broadband in Vienna – just the latest examples of operators going live with HSDPA mobile broadband offerings.

Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, says: “We see a large number of Ericsson customers introducing HSDPA during 2006 and we are confident that today’s demand for mobile broadband, advanced services and a true mobile office are paving the way for HSDPA in Europe.”

HSDPA technology provides immediate benefits over earlier technologies in three critical areas: downlink data rates are greatly improved, latency is reduced and cell capacity is substantially increased.

The Ericsson HSDPA solution provides peak download rates of 14.4Mbps, with average downlink rates comparable to today’s commercial ADSL offerings. Networks already live in the US and Japan have average data-throughput rates that exceed expectations. Future upgrades will steadily increase these average data-throughput rates, as will the growing availability of HSDPA-optimized client devices, including laptop computers and mobile phones, coming onto the market now.

Latency is another important consideration for consumer satisfaction. High latency creates an impression that network service is slow, even if data-exchange rates are high once the transmissions begin. HSDPA enables operators to reduce round-trip delay significantly, which is critical for browsing applications, content streaming or intranet access, for example.

In addition to improving the quality of the end-user experience, HSDPA doubles or even triples WCDMA cell capacity. This means operators can manage more customers simultaneously accessing data services and offer services that require higher bandwidth, without having to redesign their radio networks.

In Italy, 3 Italia has recently launched a Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) service allowing customers to make international phone calls over the internet. The operator also announced plans to launch a mobile-TV service in May or June to coincide with World Cup soccer matches that begin in early June. 3 Italia has the exclusive rights in Italy to broadcast World Cup matches to mobile phones.

Mobile broadband also enables access anywhere to e-mail, office applications and intranet resources, downloaded or streamed music and videos, internet access and many other services that can be delivered to HSDPA-connected laptop computers or phones.

Torbjörn Nilsson, senior vice president, Ericsson Strategy & Product Management, says: “Mobile operators are introducing innovative multimedia services and new applications to build market share and position themselves, as competitive pressure on voice service erodes traditional revenue streams.”

On the horizon is high-speed uplink packet access (HSUPA) technology, which Ericsson has demonstrated with uplink peak rates exceeding 1.5Mbps. A complement to HSDPA, HSUPA was standardized in 3GPP Release 6. Ericsson will offer a commercial solution in line with the availability of HSUPA-supported terminals and PC cards. These terminals and cards are widely expected to be released at the end of 2006.