Ericsson has achieved 42mbps downlink over 3G HSPA using commercial equipment.
The demo took place in Stockholm for operators like Australia’s Telstra, which is among those pioneering HSPA downlink data rates of up to 21mbps with plans to move to 42mbps. Telstra and Ericsson began the 21mbps upgrade about a year ago. Since then, several operators have said they are upgrading to 21mbps, including T-Mobile USA.
The two-fold increase to 42mbps is a big jump; the best rates 3G consumers have seen to date top out at about 28mbps, Ericsson said.
Ericsson first demonstrated its multi-carrier technology (on non-commercial gear) for peak downlink data rates of 42mbps at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, back in February. Multi-carrier technology is the next step in the evolution of HSPA and enables consumers to receive data simultaneously on two frequency channels. This doubles the user data rate in the coverage area of an HSPA network and on the cell edge, where consumers normally experience lower data rates. As a result, the peak downlink data rate increases from today's fastest available 21mbps to 42mbps.
Some have said that such speeds will delay LTE and WiMAX rollouts, especially for carriers with spectrum scarcity issues when it comes to 4G. TeliaSonera this week became the first operator to commercially deploy an LTE network (again, in Scandinavia, again, with Ericsson playing a part), which offers theoretical speeds of 20mbps to 80mbps. Time will tell if it can achieve that top range in throughput. ABI Research said this week it thought the network would be held to the lower end of the speed range because of the channels in which the network operates.
