High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) standards, first published by the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in March 2002, have gained acceptance around the world. Today's consumers can choose from more than 250 HSPA-enabled devices including PC cards and modules, modems, laptops and handsets.

HSPA is the mainstream industry standard for mobile broadband. Importantly for operators, HSPA devices are backwards-compatible, so customers can roam seamlessly between GSM/EDGE and HSPA-enabled networks, ensuring the best possible experience and convenient global access.

As described in an independent report prepared by consultant company Arthur D. Little for the GSM Association, "HSPA offers, for most operators, the least risky and best understood route to offering broadband mobile services with speeds comparable to early DSL access services."

Commercial HSPA networks already offer 7.2Mbps in the downlink and 1.4Mbps in the uplink. Today's standard provides for downlink speeds of 14Mbps; the next 3GPP standard, release 7, includes HSPA Evolved, and defines how peak data rates up to 42Mbps in the downlink and close to 12Mbps in the uplink will be attained by using more efficient modulation techniques and multilayer transmission, also called multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission. Ericsson is leading the standardization efforts for HSPA Evolved and demonstrated this technology at CTIA Wireless in the US in April 2006.

The next step in the mobile broadband evolution is 3GPP Release 8, including Long-Term Evolution/System Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE), which aims to further boost mobile broadband data rates to exceed 200Mbps in the downlink and 50Mbps in the uplink. The main LTE specifications will be finalized in September. Ericsson and seven other leading vendors and operators recently launched the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative to demonstrate and trial this technology. At February's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Ericsson showed downlink peak rates of 144Mbps during its 3G LTE demonstrations.

Erik Ekudden, head of Standardization and Industry Initiatives at Ericsson, says: "The standards evolution should leverage operators' existing assets and investments, creating new business opportunities with the lowest costs and highest performance. HSPA standards support an open and healthy ecosystem that hundreds of companies from around the world participate in.

"Global standards and international harmonization for HSPA and LTE/SAE enable economies of scale and the best possible innovation for the evolution towards new technologies necessary to continue the phenomenal success of GSM and 3G."

Ericsson is working actively in the 3GPP and other standards bodies to develop mobile broadband standards that keep in step with operators' and consumers' demands.