Broadband-speed mobile technology will be showcased at
this year's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in the second week of
February.
Suppliers at the trade show will demonstrate high-speed wireless
cards for notebooks based on a technology called HSPDA (High-Speed
Downlink Packet Access).
With Lan-like data transmission speeds of up to 8-10mbps,
analysts have said the mobile telephony protocol is poised to take
over from 3G.
Mike Welch, an analyst at Canalys, said HSDPA cards for
notebooks would be a major breakthrough for businesses.
"This gives you speed for the first time equivalent to mobile
broadband. People are used to having half a megabit at home, and
this can guarantee you that order of magnitude.
"You will not have to change your working pattern because of
pipe restrictions," he said. However, Welch warned that high
tariffs could present a barrier to adoption if operators failed to
address them, and added that there were still power consumption
problems with notebooks.
HSDPA is beginning to be deployed in North America, and in
November 2005 O2 set up one of the first UK implementations in the
Isle of Man.
Jason Chapman, managing vice-president at analyst firm Gartner,
said, "With HSDPA, speed is a big factor, but it also has lower
latency, which means that, for things such as browsing content or
working with corporate applications, the user experience is
good."
But as businesses begin to make the move to 3G and beyond, there
are issues that suppliers need to address before businesses adopt
the technology more widely.
These include the cost of using 3G - particularly high data
tariffs, integration with other technologies, and the lack of
business applications for 3G.
Analysts agree that data tariffs are too high and unpredictable
for businesses to rely on 3G to any great extent.
In terms of integrating 3G mobile devices with Wi-Fi, fixed
lines and PBXs, Nick McQuire, senior analyst for wireless at Yankee
Group, said much work is being done by suppliers such as Avaya,
Alcatel, Cisco, Motorola and Nokia.
However, before usable business services become available,
service providers need to sort out their tariffs, handset
availability, and standards, he said.
What is HSPDA?
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), also known as 3.5G,
is a mobile telephony protocol that brings Lan-like data
transmission speeds of up to 10mbps to mobile devices. The
packet-based data service runs over a 5MHz bandwidth on W-CDMA -
the technology behind 3G.
Its success as a replacement for GSM is still in the balance.
However, HSDPA has been deployed in Europe, the US and Japan. O2
used it on the Isle of Man last November, T-Mobile plans to
introduce a German service at CeBIT 2006 in March, and Vodafone
said it would offer a service in Italy soon.
Feature:
Wireless interoperability hopes