In the past couple of months I've seen in the news that some mobile operators have started to deploy HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access), the uplink brother of HSDPA in their networks in selected areas. Today, T-Mobile announced that their nationwide HSUPA network roll-out is finished. And nationwide roll-out doesn't mean just a couple of base stations, it means several thousands.
I guess it wasn't too difficult to do since HSUPA is mainly a software update. Also, base station backhaul capacity has already been increased for HSDPA. The uplink part, which is usually increased as well in symmetric links such as E-1's can now be put into good use.
This time, networks are a bit ahead of the mobiles. Except for data cards, I haven't seen a lot of HSUPA mobiles yet. All right, Nokia and co. it's about time now and I can't wait to transfer my videos to YouTube right from the mobile:-)
Data cards always come ahead of the network. Operators need data cards to test with.
For handset, how about Toshiba G810? SE XPERIA X1 is also coming. I don't know about any Nokia HSUPA ones.
Posted by: Ben Crox | July 12, 2008 at 06:06 PM
hi Martin
i would just like to say that this blog has really helped me with my product knowledge as i have only been in the telecommunication sector for two years,keep up the good work . i still need to read your 1st book.
on the aticle about hsdpa it seems that even across continents the trend seems to be the same, i am in south africa even though our speeds are not as fast as yours in the westen world we are doing pritty well with keeping up with the technology in the 3Gpp networks.Vodacom has also lunched is HSUPA at max speed of 3.6 but has added a monthly charge for this service inspite of, if you have a contract packege or a data bundle, i think this will alter the minds of customer who want to use HSUPA.
Posted by: mayembe | July 15, 2008 at 08:30 AM
Hi Martin
I'm slightly skeptical about massmarket HSUPA. Certainly, the evidence is that fewer deployments are planned than was the case at a comparable stage of HSDPA introduction a few years ago.
I posted on this yesterday:
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2008/07/hsupa-stalling.html
I suspect a lot of operators will jump straight to HSPA+ (or maybe even wait for LTE). There's not much evidence that users are prepared to pay for faster uploads.
Dean
Posted by: Dean | July 18, 2008 at 10:55 AM