HSPDA aka High-Speed Downlink Packet Access technology is the new point of bragging for most of the mobile equipment carriers. Following Siemens, now Ericsson, Alcatel and Fujistu have all announced their HSPDA. This technology is said to boost the available downlink peak data up to 14 Mb/s. Ericsson is currently demonstrating mobile broadband Internet access with video streaming and large downloads with HSDPA over a live WCDMA system, running traffic over the air.
The whole $47B Cingular-AWS merger rests on the success of this technology.
Without HSDPA, Cingular could be irrelevant very quickly, otoh, they may be a monster in the making if it works. (but the reverse link is still a problem).
The real connumdrum here rests with QCOM.
QCOM is the arms dealer for the wireless industry, and arms dealers only maximize their business via constant and competitive wars. If one carrier because dominant and kills off its competitors (ie. QCOM’s other customers), then that’s a problem.
Here’s my prediction for early next year. Flarion and QCOM will formally layout roadmaps beyond the current platforms, much in the way Intel-AMD provide technology guidance. Also much like the Intel-AMD relationship, QCOM has taken a backseat to the smaller upstart by designing 1x EV-DO Release A to be competitive with Flarion. Interesting…
In a recent post somebody asked me how I saw a possible T-Mobile-Nextel combo. Their are many reasons, and possible tangets to model, but three of the most obvious reasons are:
1) a common pedigre, a chip off the old block,
2) Nextel is a late 3G technology decider, thus they have the most flexibility, and a nationwide 10mhz block free and clear, so if (big if?) HSDPA’s accelerated development works, they’ll never do a deal with Sprint, and DT gets them to a global market. Keep in mind Nextel has two assets, PTT, and marketing.
3) DT has deep pockets, and the US market lacks public wireless stock inventory for money managers. A merger of these two creates a market of 3 major carriers (an easier buy for MMs) and one also run. The first major to go public could pull in alot of public capital. Plus VZW and Cingular have complications in going public, so this opportunity is for the taking.
For the past couple of years I’ve watch the reverse link be neglected, but I’ve also believed it was a key metric, because its the critical path/constraint in wireless being an interactive platform. I still believe this and given the rush of chips to capture broadcast digital TV and Radio on handsets, the reverse link becomes golden.
It’s amusing to me, (though this is random) that nearly *EVERYONE* in the blogosphere misspelles HSDPA as HSPDA. It seems we all have PDAs on the brain.
CS, I agree with what you see as Nextel’s strengths, but I don’t see how they fit in with the T-Mobile brand. I also don’t understand why HSDPA should factor into any decision. T-Mobile’s network build out is regarded as the worst of any national player. Getting to HSDPA will require a lot of new cell sites (this is why they are in no rush to go WCDMA). Since Nextel’s current build is designed for 800MHz propagation, it will be no help. The other big problem is that I don’t see either DT or Nextel wanting to be the minority partner in that particular merger. That, of course, is the big issue in any Nextel merger (see the one that almost happened with AWE 4 years ago).
I agree with you about the RL as well, but this is a problem for wired carriers as well. Why does Comcast give me 3Mbps down and only 300kbps up? Eventually someone will realize demand for uplink is growing and make some money.