Mobile broadband rivals show their paces

Mobile operator 3 demonstrated its new HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) wireless broadband link today as performance figures were released of rival Wimax technology set to be rolled out in British cities.

Pipex Wireless , a new company formed by service provider Pipex and Intel, said speeds of10Mbits/sec downstream and 9Mbits upstream have been achieved with external antennas at a test house, 1.2km from the base station in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Data rates dropped to 6Mbits/sec down and 4Mbits/sec up at a range of 6km.

Speeds in excess of 2Mbits/sec in both directions were achieved with receivers and aerials inside a building at a range of 1.2km; and symmetric speeds of 5Mbits/sec were achieved between a base station and a vehicle.

Pipex Wireless has said it will roll out services in several UK cities over the next two years.

Its major asset is that it owns spectrum at 3.3-3.7GHz, but this is currently restricted to fixed links. The mobile version of Wimax is likely to be in far more demand.

Pipex chief executive Mike Read said the company is now "undertaking commercial trials delivering end-to-end Wimax services with a number of local authorities and live customers".

The performance figures, which the company said exceeded expectations, are rather higher than the HSDPA link demonstrated by 3, but real-life data rates are likely to be lower because users have to share available bandwidth.

Graham Baxter, technical solutions director of 3, said handsets on sale this Christmas will be able to download data at 1.8Mbits/sec. The company expects to have upgraded all its network, covering a claimed 89 per cent of the UK population, by March next year.

Uplink speeds will increase to a rate 384Kbits/sec some time next year and new handsets will allow downloads at up to 3.6Mbits/sec in late 2007.

The technology will eventually be capable of 14.4Mbits/sec. Again, these are rated speeds rather than what  you are likely to get in practice.

Baxter showed a 4.64MB file being downloaded by a standard 3G laptop card and an HSDPA model; they took 109 seconds and 25 seconds, respectively, corresponding to data rates of 341Kbits/sec and 1.48Mbits/sec.

He was not concerned by possible competition from Wimax. "That needs an infrastructure of base stations, just like us – and ours is already in place," he said.

And he stressed that 3 was not trying to foist yet another costly technology onto the market. "We are doing this because our customers have asked for it. This is not a technology push – it is a customer pull."

A 3 spokesman admitted that throughput is likely to be slower than the demonstration figures when services start in earnest. "It will be like 3G today. You never get the full 384Kbits/sec, more like 64-128Kbits/sec. It will be the same with HSPDA, only five times faster."

For more on this see our Test Bed blog

See also Mobile Wimax set to take over

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