InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

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3GSM: Operators looking for HSDPA technology
Harry Yeates

The development status of HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) technology has been the subject of many conversations at 3GSM, variously for the network capacity benefits it promises, or for the increased bandwidth available to each user.

“Most of the interest is from operators,” said Rupert Baines, v-p of marketing at Bath-based PicoChip Designs. “They are very quietly screaming for it.”

PicoChip, whose key focus is 3G baseband processing, is seeing interest from customers wanting to apply its massively parallel signal processing technology to other wireless tasks, such as HSDPA and the 802.16 WiMAX standard for wide area broadband access.

However, it is unclear when exactly HSDPA products will become available. Although test firms are keen to claim they have kit for it, whether it is actually available now isn’t obvious.

“It’s easy for people to say they have HSDPA test... But it’s a long way to being commercial,” said David Patterson of Qualcomm. “Being reasonably aggressive, 2006 would be about right for products.” However, Patterson said factors such as network maturity could easily affect that prediction.

Qualcomm will begin sampling its MSM6275 chip, which will support EDGE and HSDPA, by the end of this year. Initial products will be specified to offer downlink speeds of 1.8Mbit/s, rather than the 14Mbit/s upper limit often touted. “Our approach is to start at 1.8Mbit/s and get that working right,” said Patterson.

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http://www.electronicsweekly.co.uk/issue/dailyview.asp?vpath=/articles/2004/02/25/daily07.htm