US : 3G Americas announced a breakthrough in commercial volume with 107 live HSDPA (High Speed Download Packet Access) commercial networks in 55 countries worldwide, and yet another 82 HSDPA networks planned or in deployment. Among those countries deploying HSDPA is Brazil, the largest mobile market in Latin America with an estimated 66.5 million GSM customers today according to Informa Telecoms & Media, WCIS. The market will be led by the recent announcement of Telemig Celular and Ericsson to construct and deploy the first UMTS network with HSDPA capacity in Brazil.

The momentum of the third generation of GSM’s 3G evolution continues to escalate. In only 16 months since the first launch of HSDPA by Cingular Wireless in December 2005, the number of commercial HSDPA networks has increased worldwide from one to 107. PC cards, the first generation of HSDPA-capable devices, became available in Q4 2005; handsets, in Q2 2006. There are more than 200 HSDPA devices that have been launched in the market since the first deployment of HSDPA.

2006 was the year HSDPA technology made its way across the Americas, with networks in service in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Chile. “HSDPA is now coming to Brazil, where it's estimated that 20 million GSM subscribers were added in the year between Q1 2006 and Q1 2007, resulting in an approximate 64% market share for GSM," commented Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas.

HSPDA users today experience throughput rates in excess of 1 Mbps under favorable conditions, as well as latency reduced to 70-100 milliseconds. Already, more than two-thirds of the 163 commercial UMTS operators have deployed HSDPA. Later in 2007, HSUPA, the comparable high-speed technology for the uplink, will begin commercial deployment. The combined technologies for the downlink (HSDPA) and uplink (HSUPA) will be referred to as HSPA.

HSPA users will experience peak achievable rates of close to 1 Mbps in the uplink under favorable conditions. This translates into a wide variety of new, differentiated multimedia services with greater efficiency such as video calling, interactive gaming and other applications. Added Rojas, "Latin American GSM operators, like those in the US and Canada, expect value-added data applications to continue to grow in the years ahead.” It is expected that virtually all of the operators publicly committed to UMTS will upgrade to HSPA, providing them with a significant increase in data capacity and a much-reduced network cost for data services.

About 3G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Wireless Technology
The mission of 3G Americas is to promote and facilitate the seamless deployment throughout the Americas of GSM and its evolution to 3G and beyond. The organization fully supports the Third Generation (3G) technology migration strategy to EDGE and UMTS/HSPA adopted by many operators in the Americas that is expected to account for up to 85% of next-generation customers worldwide. 3G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, WA with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas, TX.