BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwire - July 10, 2007) - 3G Americas, a wireless industry group
supporting the GSM family of technologies in the Americas, today published
"UMTS Evolution from 3GPP Release 7 to Release 8: HSPA and SAE/LTE." The
paper highlights the recent activity on Release 7 as it nears its
completion in the 3GPP technology standardization process, and provides a
detailed overview of the enhanced features of Release 8, explaining the
leading evolutionary roadmap for the GSM family of technologies to 3G and
beyond. The 3GPP Release 7 and 8 standards work is largely driven by the
rising demand for wireless data services, and this is evident in the growth
of data services revenues worldwide. Enabling this growth is the
UMTS/HSPA technology which is firmly established as the high speed advanced
technology roadmap for 2.5 billion customers served by GSM operators
worldwide. The GSM technology family represents 85% of the world's
wireless subscribers.
Operators have aggressively rolled out HSDPA in the last twelve months to
serve the growing demands for advanced wireless data services. The number
of
operator
deployments of HSDPA has increased by 200% in the last year, from 41
HSDPA networks to 127 commercial HSDPA networks today in 60 countries.
Overall, there are 174 total deployments of UMTS technology in 73 countries
and more than 250 commercial HSDPA devices available worldwide today.
Several HSUPA networks have been initially deployed in Asia and Europe, and
it is expected that most UMTS/HSDPA operators will deploy HSUPA, with a
high volume of deployments occurring in 2008. With a wide variety of
devices and worldwide network deployments in place, customers are pushing
for speed and applications to satisfy their demand for services such as,
web browsing, email, mobile payments, interactive gaming and video sharing.
In fact, Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that there are nearly 135
million UMTS customers worldwide today, millions of whom are enjoying the
benefits of the HSDPA enhancement, and these numbers are quickly growing.
This newly published 3G Americas' white paper "UMTS Evolution from 3GPP
Release 7 to Release 8: HSPA and SAE/LTE" explains the deployment status of
UMTS and HSPA technologies, as well as the detailed standards progress and
expected technology performance of the technologies.
There has been significant progress on Release 7 standards over the course
of 2006-2007 and vendors are proceeding well in the development of the
future commercial introduction of Release 7 or HSPA Evolution (HSPA+).
Release 7 will bring improved support and performance for real-time
conversational and interactive services such as picture and video sharing,
and Voice and Video over IP. The white paper describes the important new
additions to the concept of HSPA+, such as Enhanced Receivers, Multiple
Input Multiple Output (MIMO), Continuous Packet Connectivity (CPC) and
Higher Order Modulations (HOMs). Since HSPA+ enhancements are fully
backwards compatible with Rel-99/Rel-5/Rel-6, the upgrade to HSPA+ has been
made smooth and evolutionary for GSM operators. Release 7 also
standardizes Evolved EDGE which will improve the user experience across all
wireless data services by reducing latency and increasing data throughput
and capacity. Evolved EDGE will ensure transparency between EDGE and HSPA
as well as future LTE-based services. The Evolved EDGE standards
development will also continue in Release 8.
While the standards work continues on the evolution of HSPA in Release 8,
another area of focus in Release 8 is the introduction of a new OFDM-based
technology through the Long Term Evolution (LTE) work item, often referred
to as the Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (EUTRAN). In
parallel, 3GPP has progressed on the standards development and definition
of a new flatter-IP core network to support the EUTRAN through the System
Architecture Evolution (SAE) work item, which has recently been renamed the
Evolved Packet System (EPS) Architecture. The combination of LTE and
SAE/EPS provides the long term vision for 3GPP to an all-IP, packet-only
OFDM-based system expected to further improve performance by providing
higher data rates, improved spectral efficiency and reduced latency. 3GPP
recently reported LTE's peak theoretical downlink throughput rates of up to
326 Mbps in 2X20 MHz with 4X4 MIMO. Based upon some vendors' UMTS/HSPA
infrastructure being deployed in 2007, operators may be able to migrate to
LTE through a straightforward upgrade. The first field trials for LTE are
planned for 2008, with commercial availability in 2009.
"It is evident that the HSPA technology as defined in 3GPP Release 5 and 6
has, in a very short time period, created a self-supporting and rapidly
enhanced development structure," stated Chris Pearson, President of 3G
Americas. "This ecosystem thrives with the GSM family of technology's
global presence and abundance of devices and services. This in turn drives
the expansion of coverage, the addition of applications and devices to the
market, network enhancements, progress in the evolutionary roadmap and
further economies of scale -- the circle of technology life that provides
for continued GSM market leadership."
The "
UMTS
Evolution from 3GPP Release 7 to Release 8: HSPA and SAE/LTE" white
paper was collaboratively developed by 3G Americas' board member companies
and is available for free download at the 3G Americas' website:
www.3gamericas.org. The paper includes appendices of UMTS and HSPA
deployments worldwide.
Terminology of the GSM Evolution
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), also known as WCDMA: The
GSM evolution to Third Generation (3G) high speed wireless data services,
adopted worldwide as the leading wireless standard. UMTS represents an
evolution from GSM Second Generation (2G) mobile networks in terms of
capacity, data speeds and new service capabilities. It is an Internet
Protocol-based (IP) technology that supports packetized voice and data,
delivers theoretical peak data rates of up to 2 Mbps, and average speeds of
220-320 Kbps for UMTS Release '99. Additional benefits of UMTS include
simultaneous voice and data capability for users, high user densities that
can be supported with low infrastructure cost due to the scope and scale of
2.5 billion GSM/UMTS customers, and support for high-bandwidth data
applications.
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA): A nomenclature for developments
encompassing both directions of information transmission -- the downlink
(HSDPA) and the uplink (HSUPA) directions. HSPA is an enhancement to UMTS
and offers a successful combination of spectral efficiency (4-5 times that
of UMTS) and high speed data throughput thus enabling true mass market
mobile broadband. HSDPA users today experience throughput rates in excess
of 1 Mbps with favorable conditions and this will increase with planned
improvements to HSPDA. HSUPA users will experience peak user achievable
rates close to 1 Mbps in the uplink under favorable conditions, and low
latency (less than 100 ms). HSPA also lowers an operators' cost per bit,
enabling cost-effective, rich multimedia services.
Evolved EDGE: The EDGE evolution is expected to enable operators the
opportunity to upgrade their EDGE networks to improve service coverage and
more than double spectral efficiency for EDGE, reduce latency to less than
80 ms, and increase data rates to a peak theoretical rate per user of 1
Mbps for the downlink and 500 Kbps for the uplink.
HSPA Evolution (HSPA+): HSPA+ is a study item of 3GPP with a goal of
creating a highly optimized version of HSPA that employs Release 7 features
and other incremental features such as interference cancelization and
optimization to reduce latency. HSPA+ would enable operators to capitalize
on existing RAN infrastructure investments, as well as possibly leverage
the use of the SAE core with the current radio interface in 2 x 5 MHz
spectrum. Depending on the features implemented, HSPA+ could match, and
possibly exceed, the potential performance and capability of IEEE 802.16e -
2005 (mobile WiMAX) in the same amount of spectrum, and could match LTE
performance in 5 MHz.
System Architecture Evolution (SAE): The 3GPP work item for SAE or Evolved
Packet System (EPS) develops a framework for a higher-data-rate,
lower-latency, packet-optimized system that supports multiple radio access
technologies with a focus on the packet-switched domain to support voice
services. The main drivers for the network evolution are: to be able to
meet the targets for the evolution of the radio-interface (LTE), to enable
the evolution towards an all-IP network, and to support mobility and
service continuity between heterogeneous access networks.
Long Term Evolution (LTE): The 3GPP work item on the Long Term Evolution
(LTE) or EUTRAN (Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network) or the
Air-Interface Evolution will develop a framework for a high-data-rate,
low-latency and packet-optimized OFDMA radio-access technology. Products
are expected to be commercially available in 2009.
About 3G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Wireless Technology
The mission of 3G Americas is to promote and facilitate the seamless
deployment throughout the Americas of GSM and its evolution to 3G and
beyond. The organization fully supports the Third Generation (3G)
technology migration strategy to EDGE and UMTS/HSPA adopted by many
operators in the Americas. The GSM family of technologies accounts for 85%
of wireless mobile customers worldwide. 3G Americas is headquartered in
Bellevue, WA with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas,
TX. For more information, visit our website at
www.3gamericas.org.
Contact Information: Contact:
Vicki Livingston
(262) 242 3458