Europe
: In a few months, Slovak citizens will have a chance to exploit advantages
of super-speed mobile internet. Orange Slovensko is intensively testing
on HSDPA and TDD technologies these days.
Mobile
internet using these technologies can reach speed of 14 Mbps, that
is incomparable faster than the competing technologies available today.
The big advantage of the solution from Orange is that it will be supported
by most of the mobile vendors. Orange announced the test of the enhanced
possibilities of the third generation network following the announcement
of its launch of the first 3G trial network in Slovakia and following
the presentation of the first successful video call.
Orange is now
testing two technical solutions that would give Orange customers mobile
broadband internet access with megabit speeds. The first, HSDPA, can
reach peak sector speeds of up to 14 Mbps under ideal conditions.
HSDPA is a next step in the evolution of UMTS, and unlike other, mostly
proprietary solutions, one can expect it will be supported by all
major manufacturers. The second one, UMTS TDD, is also part of the
UMTS family of standard, and is the technology used most for commercial
mobile broadband deployments to date.
„Both alternatives
have their advantages. They enable high transfer and low latency rates
that will compete with fixed line broadband,” said Dana Prekopová,
Technical Director, Orange Slovensko.
HSDPA is often
marketed as „3.5G“ technology. Most of the large manufacturers,
such as Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, NEC, Sanyo, Sharp,
will support HSDPA in their devices because, unlike other, proprietary
technologies, it is a standards-based technology. With standards come
important benefits including large-scale implementation in multiple
countries, which brings more subscribers devices that are affordable
sooner, and roaming, giving subscribers the ability to use the services
not only in their home network but also abroad.
Orange Slovensko
is trialing the second alternative, UMTS TDD technology from IPWireless,
in a 5MHz unpaired channel, which enables peak user speeds of 5 Mbps
with latency less than 50ms. Future development of this technology
will increase speeds to 13.5 Mbps. Unlike traditional 3G, UMTS TDD
uses one wide swath of spectrum to both receive and send data, so
it is well suited to data applications. UMTS TDD is an attractive
technology because it can be deployed in IMT-2000 spectrum and it
is already commercially proven, with dozens of commercial and trial
mobile networks in Europe and overseas, including in the Czech Republic.
As a UMTS standards-based technology, UMTS TDD networks are designed
to integrate seamlessly with existing 3G and HSDPA systems, requiring
only additional equipment in the BTS´s and specialized data-centric
devices for subscribers.