Europe
: Ericsson's HSDPA solution is now in operation in 15 countries in
Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America. This was
announced by Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson,
at Stora Aktiedagen, a major retail shareholder event in Stockholm.
In all these 15 countries,
the solution is live on commercial hardware and software, providing
data speeds up to 3.6Mbps in the downlink. Operators worldwide are
today exploring 3G/HSDPA-enabled services, as preparation for fast
commercial launches.
Carl-Henric
Svanberg ( inset ), President and CEO of Ericsson, says:
"We have received positive reactions from our customers to the
opportunity to explore the mobile broadband possibilities of HSDPA
at an early stage. There are now 15 live HSDPA systems, with ongoing
evaluations of applications. This strengthens my belief that we will
see many successful HSDPA launches during 2006, based on our solution."
In addition, Ericsson recently
upgraded Cingular's UMTS/WCDMA network to HSDPA, making the operator
the first in the world to offer services over a commercial HSDPA network.
Another important milestone was passed earlier this month when Ericsson
upgraded Vodafone KK's commercial network in central parts of Tokyo
to support HSDPA.
HSDPA, the next step in
the evolution of WCDMA, enables download data speeds of up to 14.4Mbps,
offers operators more than double the system capacity and makes the
response time for interactive services faster.
Mobile broadband with access
anywhere to e-mail, on-line music and video, internet-services and
mobile TV will fully exploit the capabilities that HSDPA provides
and make these mass-market services.
WCDMA is selected by eight
of the world's ten largest operators. Ericsson expects that, by 2007,
as many as 80 percent of all mobile subscribers will be served by
the GSM/ EDGE/WCDMA family.