Mobile industry will bet on 3.5G

Mobile industry association the GSMA has confirmed today that HSDPA - a high speed broadband technology some call 3.5G - is the only upcoming access technology to get its official seal of approval.

HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) is already on the shopping list of several major operators around the world in the GSM camp, including Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and has gained widespread acceptance with a thumbs-up from the GSMA, which represents 680 of the world's mobile operators.

The GSMA believes HSDPA - a software upgrade to 3G W-CDMA - will be the main access technology in years to come, with other technologies playing a "complementary" role.

According to the Association, HSDPA is now in use on 83 networks in 38 countries. As well as giving network operators more capacity for voice calls, upgrades to HSDPA will mean faster speeds for mobile internet access - up to more than 10Mbps, theoretically - as well as backward compatibility with GSM.

GSMA member Cingular, the biggest network operator in the US, will be the first to roll out HSDPA commercially - in a couple of months' time. Dell has already announced it is building a laptop with an embedded HSDPA modem.

According to wireless analysts Visant Strategies, by 2010 1.3 billion mobile users will be using 3G, of which "hundreds of millions" will be using HSDPA.