3G and UMTS Technology

Mobile data communications is evolving quickly because of Internet, Intranet, Laptops, PDAs and increased requirements of workforce mobility. 3G UMTS will be the commercial convergence of fixed line telephony, mobile, Internet and computer technology. New technologies are required to deliver high speed location and mobile terminal specific content to users. The emergence of new technologies thus provides an opportunity for a similar boom what the computer industry had in 1980s, and Internet and wireless voice had in 1990s.

The main IMT-2000 standardisation effort was to create a new air interface that would increase frequency usage efficiency. The WCDMA air interface was selected for paired frequency bands (FDD operation) and TDCDMA (TDD operation) for unpaired spectrum. 3G CDMA2000 standard was created to support IS-95 evolution.

The UMTS transport network is required to handle high data traffic. A number of factors were considered when selecting a transport protocol: bandwidth efficiency, quality of service, standardisation stability, speech delay sensitivity and the permitted maximum number of concurrent users. In the UMTS network, ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is defined for the connection between UTRAN and the core network and may also be used within the core network. In addition to the IMT-2000 frame many new standards will be integrated as part of the next generation mobile systems. Bluetooth and other close range communication protocols and several different operating systems will be used in mobiles. Internet will come to mobiles with WAP, i-mode and XML protocols. 3G development has helped to start the standardisation and development of large family of technologies.

World First 42Mbps 3G HSPA Sppeeds Achieved

Mobile broadband with HSPA continues to evolve. In a world with a continuous demand for faster speed.

Industry leaders are keen to upgrade networks in order to give consumers an even better experience. Australian operator, Telstra was amongst leading operators who were in attendance when Ericsson demonstrated its latest mobile broadband technology, HSPA Evolution with 42Mbps, near Stockholm, Sweden.

It was the first time in the world such speeds was achieved on commercially-available products. Until now, consumers have seen network speeds of 28Mbps at best.

Michael Rocca, acting Chief Operations Officer of Telstra says: "The Telstra Next G? network has already changed the way Australians live and work with its speed, capacity and coverage. What we are discovering with the HSPA Dual Carrier tests is a super fast mobile broadband solution that, once compatible devices are available, will deliver meaningful speed, capacity and efficiency improvements on the network."

Ulf Ewaldsson, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson says: "Our studies show that consumers are thirsty for higher speed and choose operators that can offer the best performance for an attractive price. Our HSPA technology for 42Mbps is now available for deployment."

Faster speeds give consumers a real feeling of "instant access". The new dual carrier technology can be implemented with a software upgrade only and doubles the speed for users everywhere in the cell of the mobile network, even for users at the edge of the cell, where performance is generally lower. This will also increase the capacity and operators can deliver more gigabytes per base station, hence reducing the cost of delivering mobile broadband to consumers.

Commercially-available hardware and software was used with the first commercial chipset for 42Mbps dual carrier technology. The average consumer download speed achieved in the demo was a staggering 41.5Mbps.

42Mbps is the peak network downlink speed. Actual customer download speeds are less and can vary due to congestion, distance from the base station, local conditions, hardware, software and other factors.