3G Americas, a wireless industry group supporting the GSM family of
technologies in the Americas has published a white
paper: "Mobile Broadband: The Global Evolution of UMTS/HSPA -- 3GPP
Release 7 and Beyond" covering industry progress towards UMTS/HSPA and its
long term evolution. The GSM standards body, 3GPP has set out a roadmap for the
evolution of UMTS/HSPA from Release '99 through Release 7. The white paper
explores Release 7 and the future beyond HSPA (UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA) with the HSPA
Evolution (HSPA+), Long Term Evolution (LTE) and System Architecture Evolution (SAE)
initiatives. The paper also looks at the growing demands for wireless data, as
well as the impact of a variety of wireless data applications on carriers'
ARPU.
3GPP Release 7, currently in standards development, will increase speed and
capacity and provide improved support of real-time services like VoIP,
interactive gaming and push-to-talk over cellular. Support for multiple input
multiple output (MIMO), will take theoretical peak rates well above today's 14
Mbps, in addition to improving the average cell throughput. Other new Rel-7
features include: radio access network enhancements such as continuous
connectivity, setup latency improvements, core network and IMS enhancements
related to multimedia telephony, support of voice call continuity, and policy
and charging convergence.).
Beyond Release 7, the white paper examines 3GPP's work on a new radio interface
and new system architecture to handle the rapid growth in IP data traffic that
will take theoretical peak rates to above 100 Mbps for downlink and 50 Mbps for
uplink, and reduce latency to levels comparable with fixed broadband internet (
less than five milliseconds in ideal conditions).
The white paper was collaboratively developed by 3G Americas' board member
companies and is available for free download at : www.3gamericas.org.
