Wireless industry posts 4bn mobile connections
Four billion connections were achieved by the wireless industry in 2008 to mobile devices worldwide, said 3G Americas, a trade association.
The wireless industry trade association representing the GSM family of technologies including LTE (long-term evolution) was quoting an estimate by Informa Telecoms and Media, representing 60 per cent of the global population.
In some countries, millions of people are now experiencing connectivity to the world for the first time through wireless and changing their economic, social and political fortunes forever.
As many emerging markets are achieving a new level of communication, wireless technology continues its rapid advancement into next generation mobile networks. Currently, more than 100 operators worldwide, including most industry leaders, have announced expectations to migrate networks to LTE from 2010 and beyond.
LTE is the next evolution of mobile broadband technology that utilises OFDM-based technology and a flat-IP core network allowing an enhanced Internet experience on mobile devices.
"Third generation technologies continue to evolve and the GSM operator today has a clear path towards LTE," said Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas. "In addition to the evolution to LTE by GSM operators, LTE is proving to be the technology choice for CDMA operators as well."
The number of wireless users on 3G services continues to rise. Informa estimates that there are nearly 415 million 3G subscriptions to date, with 77 per cent share of the 3G market on UMTS/HSPA networks or 320 million connections, and the remaining 95 million on CDMA EV-DO. The number of commercial UMTS/HSPA networks has risen to 258 in more than 100 countries, including 41 networks in 20 countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is a collection of mobile telephony protocols that extend and improve the performance of existing UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) protocols. Two standards, HSDPA and HSUPA, have been established and a further standard, HSPA+, is soon to be released.
"HSPA and HSPA+ will compete with any and all mobile wireless technologies available today and in the near future," concluded Pearson.
"In fact, recent commercial launches of HSPA+, such as that of Telstra in Australia, are reporting peak theoretical downlink speeds of 21.6 Mbps. 3G is more than capable of delivering the bandwidth customers need today, and the emerging LTE technology provides us with a clear evolution path for the future."