Orange Trialing HSDPA and UMTS TDD for Wireless Broadband

Orange Slovensko is testing two technical solutions that would give Orange customers mobile broadband internet access with megabit speeds.

The first, HSDPA, can reach peak sector speeds of up to 14 Mbps under ideal conditions. HSDPA is a next step in the evolution of UMTS. The second one, UMTS TDD, is also part of the UMTS family of standard, and is the technology used most for commercial mobile broadband deployments to date.

HSDPA is often marketed as "3.5G“ technology. Most of the large manufacturers, such as Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, NEC, Sanyo, Sharp, will support HSDPA in their devices.

Orange Slovensko is trialing the second alternative, UMTS TDD technology from IPWireless, in a 5MHz unpaired channel, which enables peak user speeds of 5 Mbps with latency less than 50ms. The companies say that future development of this technology will increase speeds to 13.5 Mbps.

Unlike traditional 3G, UMTS TDD uses one wide swath of spectrum to both receive and send data, so it is suited to data applications. UMTS TDD is an attractive technology because it can be deployed in IMT-2000 spectrum and it is already commercially proven, with commercial and trial mobile networks in Europe and overseas, including in the Czech Republic.

As a UMTS standards-based technology, UMTS TDD networks are designed to integrate seamlessly with existing 3G and HSDPA systems, requiring only additional equipment in the BTS´s and specialized data-centric devices for subscribers.