UMTS Evolution Ready to Meet the Growing Demands for High Speed Wireless Data Services

3G Americas Publishes White Paper on 3GPP Release 7 and Beyond

Bellevue, WA, July 13, 2006 - 3G Americas, a wireless industry group supporting the GSM family of technologies in the Americas, today published Mobile Broadband: The Global Evolution of UMTS/HSPA -- 3GPP Release 7 and Beyond, a white paper covering industry progress towards UMTS/HSPA and its long term evolution.

3GPP has set forth the roadmap for the evolution of UMTS/HSPA from Release '99 through Release 7 with developmental and standardization work in place. Mobile Broadband: The Global Evolution of UMTS/HSPA -- 3GPP Release 7 and Beyond 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. Also highlighted in the paper are the growing demands for wireless data, as well as the successes of a variety of wireless data applications that are increasing average revenue per user (ARPU) for carriers. Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas stated, "The innovative standards work at 3GPP is providing the foundation of advanced wireless broadband functionality, to the benefit of operators and their customers worldwide. UMTS and its long term evolution will lead the way in meeting the high speed wireless data application demands of customers for years to come. UMTS offers an advanced, mass market, future-proof migration strategy for the next decade and beyond."

There are nearly 75 million UMTS customers worldwide today, across 107 commercial networks. In December 2005, Cingular Wireless launched UMTS/HSDPA in sixteen US markets and became the first operator in the world to launch this enhanced UMTS technology on a wide scale commercial basis. Today, there are 41 operators in 31 countries offering HSDPA services, with additional HSDPA commitments from 67 more operators as of this date. It is expected that most UMTS operators will deploy HSDPA.

3GPP Release 7, currently in standards development, continues UMTS momentum by enabling even faster speeds and capacity improvements as well as improved support of real-time services like voice-over-IP (VoIP), interactive gaming and push-to-talk over cellular. Enhancements include features such as Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), taking 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 (RAN) enhancements such as continuous connectivity, setup latency improvements, Core Network and IMS enhancements related to multi-media telephony, support of voice call continuity, and Policy and Charging Convergence (PCC).

Looking beyond Release 7 to HSPA Evolution (HSPA+), SAE (System Architecture Evolution) and 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution), the white paper uncovers 3GPP's work on a new radio interface and new system architecture, to handle the rapid growth in IP data traffic, and to ensure competitiveness for the next decade and beyond. The continued evolution of the 3GPP technologies will bring theoretical peak rates to above 100 Mbps for downlink and 50 Mbps for uplink, and reduced latency to levels comparable with fixed broadband internet, e.g. less than five milliseconds in ideal conditions.

The Mobile Broadband: The Global Evolution of UMTS/HSPA – 3GPP Release 7 and Beyond 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, EDGE/UMTS, and HSDPA 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. Compared to other next generation technologies, UMTS has the greatest spectral efficiency and lowest latency. Additional benefits of UMTS include simultaneous vice and data capability for users, high user densities that can be supported with low infrastructure cost due to the scope and scale of 2 billion GSM 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), high speed data throughput (eventually averaging 550-1100 Kbps on the downlink), and low latency (less than 100 ms), thus enabling true mass market mobile broadband. HSPA also lowers the cost per bit, enabling cost-effective, rich multimedia services.

HSPA Evolution (HSPA+): HSPA+ is a study item of 3GPP to enable operators to capitalize on existing RAN infrastructure investments by further improving the radio performance of HSPA, as well as leveraging the use of the SAE core with the current radio interface in 2 x 5 MHz spectrum. HSDPA is now being deployed and HSUPA (E-DCH) will be deployed by 1Q 2007. HSPA+ is an enhancement where simplifications and rationalizations agreed upon for LTE/SAE are partially applied to the HSPA system with a vision of providing full service delivery through the Packet Switched (PS) Domain.

System Architecture Evolution (SAE): The 3GPP work item for developing 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) of UTRAN (Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network) or the Air-Interface Evolution to develop a framework for a high-data-rate, low-latency and packet-optimized radio-access technology. Products are not expected to be available until 2009-2010.

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 technology migration strategy to EDGE and UMTS/HSPA adopted by many operators in the Americas that is expected to account for up to 85% of next-generation 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.

3G Americas’ Board of Governor members include AT&T Wireless (USA), Cable & Wireless (West Indies), Cingular Wireless (USA), Ericsson, Gemalto, HP, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Openwave Systems, Research In Motion, Rogers Wireless (Canada), Siemens, T-Mobile USA, Telcel (Mexico), Telefónica Móviles (Spain), and Texas Instruments.

Source: 3G Americas