Balanced News Blog

The battle for 3G supremacy continues. From the GSM side, Nortel and Qualcomm recently announced that they have successfully completed HSDPA calls reaching an astounding data transfer rate of 3.6 Mbps.

This was achieved using category 6 handsets using 16 QAM modulation. They combined the test terminals based on Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM6280 solution, with Nortel’s commercial HSDPA network equipment. The speed achieved is said to have surpassed the majority of fixed broadband connections, and as such, has been considered a considerable achievement.

This builds on a year of advances in the industry. In January 2005, the first-ever HSDPA mobile call was made. In March, Nortel and LGE teamed up for the first live HSDPA test calls using a commercial handset solution. In June, Nortel became the first wireless network supplier to complete the TL9000 registration standard for Quality Management System Requirements and Measurements across its HSDPA, UMTS and GSM wireless infrastructure solutions.