Orange has launched the initial phase of its live HSDPA services in the Paris area. At first, Orange friendly users located in Issy-les-Moulineaux and Boulogne-Billancourt, two major cities in the Paris region, will test true mobile broadband services including high-speed Internet access and fast download of video clips.
“HSDPA will further improve the success of 3G, delivering increased bandwidth capabilities necessary to accommodate the market uptake of high-speed mobile applications, amongst which content downloads and mobile TV. Software-up-gradable radio solutions such as the Alcatel one are a cost effective response to operators’ requirements for HSDPA introduction,” said Vincent Poulbere, Senior Analyst at Ovum.
“HSDPA is a key technology for making mobile broadband possible. It represents the next important evolution step for our 3G/UMTS commercial networks, ” said Vivek Bradinath, Executive Vice President, Products, Technology and Innovation, Orange Group. “As per our current tests, Alcatel’s HSDPA solution is demonstrating its merits both in terms of performance and commercial readiness. We are confident that Alcatel’s continuous support and world class technology will help us in building out and operating our network efficiently, as well as in enabling us to cost- effectively introduce innovative and revenue-generating HSDPA services later this year.”
“The successful progress of our HSDPA field trial with Orange reflects the close and long-standing partnership between our two companies. It is also another signal of market recognition of Alcatel’s technical innovation to enable mobile broadband,” said Marc Rouanne, President of Alcatel’s mobile communications activities. “Providing them with our HSDPA solution will allow Orange to bring significant added value over 3G/UMTS, and to stay ahead of customer demand and satisfaction.”
Alcatel’s Evolium® HSDPA solution provides mobile operators and mobile users alike with the maximum benefits of HSDPA. Beyond the QPSK modulation (up to 3.6 Mb/s), which is mandatory according to 3GPP specifications, the Alcatel solution natively delivers the optional 16QAM modulation (up to 14.4 Mb/s), and seamlessly supports from day one all terminal categories such as Categories 8 and 10 (7.2 Mb/s and 14.4 Mb/s respectively). When in commercial use, the actual average user data throughput of Alcatel’s HSDPA solution will immediately allow data rates from 2 to 3Mb/s, i.e. from five to eight times more than the current 3G/UMTS 384 kb/s maximum throughput.
Since February 2005, Alcatel has carried out interoperability tests between its Alcatel Evolium® multi-standard mobile network infrastructure solution and Qualcomm’s HSDPA-enabled chipsets. More recently, similar tests have been successfully undertaken with Samsung handsets. Alcatel is also partnering on interoperability testing with Novatel Wireless Inc and Option International.