HSPA
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AT&T to add HSUPA this year
Not to be outdone by the impending reality of nationwide EV-DO Rev. A from both Sprint and Verizon, AT&T's apparently felt enough heat to come clean with its intentions for an HSUPA launch. The technology -- the second half of the equation in GSM's HSPA 3.5G strategy, the first being HSDPA -- works the same magic for uplink speeds that HSDPA did for downlink, giving users uploads in the 1.5Mbps range. For the record, users of AT&T's present HSDPA network get hooked up with plain ol' UMTS uplink speeds in the high 300kbps range, so needless to say, this is an upgrade we can throw our support behind. Look for AT&T to roll out the requisite software upgrades to its equipment over the course of 2007, with the first compatible modems hitting midyear. Hint, hint: ExpressCards, AT&T. Please.
Ericsson gives HSDPA a Latin flair
HSDPA rollouts seem to be progressing at a solid clip across Europe, Asia, and North America -- and before too long, we might be able to add Latin America to that list. Ericsson takes the honors for providing the infrastructure to light up the continent's first HSDPA network, which will find its home with Chile's ENTEL PCS. Technically, Ericsson is calling the network simply "HSPA," a generalization of HSDPA / HSUPA that leaves open the possibility of going big with upstream speeds down the road. For now, Ericsson is speaking in theoretical terms, saying only that it'll go "up to 14.4Mbps" down to the handsets, but a more realistic goal in the near term is the several hundred kilobits to a couple megabits per second most carriers around the world are currently providing. ¡Viva WCDMA![Thanks, Daydalaus]
