Phone Service Feature

Many mobile operators using the GSM air interface could save quite a lot of capital investment in the near term by upgrading their HSPA networks to HSPA+ rather than Long Term Evolution as an interim step, say researchers at Aircom International.

The amount of capital investment reduction for a U.K. operator could be as much as $500 million in 12 months, while a U.S. operator could save as much as $1.2 billion.

HSPA+ supports downstream bandwidth as high as 21 Mbps without any additional antenna infrastructure and enables users to experience mobile broadband around five times faster than the current average of 3.6Mbps. HSPA+ also allows mobile operators to control service provisioning and prioritisation, delivering quality of experience and quality of service guarantees, Aircom says.

In  fact, that is precisely what T-Mobile USA and now AT&T (News - Alert) have decided to do. All of which is bound to lead to some marketing battles around bandwidth capabilities. The promise of fourth-generation networks (4G) has been 'more bandwidth' and 'lower latency,' which from a consumer perspective will mean smoother-looking video, better voice, gaming and conferencing experiences, at the very least.

"HSPA+ is able to meet or exceed current data demands, delivering a theoretical maximum of 21 Mbps and an average experience of around 16Mbps,' says Fabrizio Martinez, Aircom services director.

Martinez also says the increase in speed enables operators to increase the range and sophistication of their retail offers as well. "As operators are able to prioritize data traffic, it is possible to create tiered pricing models that are more similar to fixed-line services, which already offer a range of bandwidth options.

Aircom estimates that an HSPA+ investment will have a return on investment of three years, at which point it will make sense to upgrade to LTE (News - Alert), when that technology's ecosystem has matured, devices have come to market, and equipment prices have reduced, says Martinez.

Sprint and Verizon (News - Alert) do not have the choice, though, as both use the CDMA air interface, and have the option of either WiMAX or LTE air interfaces, choices each has made, Sprint (News - Alert) using its Clearwire network to upgrade to 4G using WiMAX, while Verizon Wireless has opted to go straight to LTE, before most other GSM-based competitors.

With the exception of the ability to fashion new retail packages offering differentiated speeds and quality of service assurances, most users will not care which network they are using. Also, there appear to be few remaining regional carriers that have not already made a decision, one way or the other, on whether to upgrade directly to LTE or to HSPA+.

The Aircom study seems most relevant for mobile operators elsewhere, such as Europe, where LTE remains some ways off, as spectrum auctions and awards have just started, in nearly all cases. The general expectation is that U.S. operators will have their LTE networks up and running before most operators in Europe.