News

Orange decides on the super-speed mobile internet of the future

Bratislava, 17. October 2005 - In a few months, Slovak citizens will have a chance to exploit advantages of super-speed mobile internet. Orange Slovensko is intensively testing on HSDPA and TDD technologies these days. Mobile internet using these technologies can reach speed of 14 Mbps, that is incomparably faster than the competing technologies available today.

The big advantage of the solution from Orange is that it will be supported by most of the mobile vendors. Orange announced the test of the enhanced possibilities of the third generation network following the announcement of its launch of the first 3G trial network in Slovakia and following the presentation of the first successful video call.

Orange is now testing two technical solutions that would give Orange customers mobile broadband internet access with megabit speeds. The first, HSDPA, can reach peak sector speeds of up to 14 Mbps under ideal conditions. HSDPA is a next step in the evolution of UMTS, and unlike other, mostly proprietary solutions, one can expect it will be supported by all major manufacturers. The second one, UMTS TDD, is also part of the UMTS family of standard, and is the technology used most for commercial mobile broadband deployments to date.

 "Both alternatives have their advantages. They enable high transfer and low latency rates that will compete with fixed line broadband," said Dana Prekopová, Technical Director, Orange Slovensko.

HSDPA is often marketed as "3.5G" technology. Most of the large manufacturers, such as Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, NEC, Sanyo, Sharp, will support HSDPA in their devices because, unlike other, proprietary technologies, it is a standards-based technology.  With standards come important benefits including large-scale implementation in multiple countries, which brings more subscribers devices that are affordable sooner, and roaming, giving subscribers the ability to use the services not only in their home network but also abroad.

Orange Slovensko is trialling the second alternative, UMTS TDD technology from IPWireless, in a 5MHz unpaired channel, which enables peak user speeds of 5 Mbps with latency less than 50ms.  Future development of this technology will increase speeds to 13.5 Mbps.  Unlike traditional 3G, UMTS TDD uses one wide swath of spectrum to both receive and send data, so it is well suited to data applications. UMTS TDD is an attractive technology because it can be deployed in IMT-2000 spectrum and it is already commercially proven, with dozens of commercial and trial mobile networks in Europe and overseas, including in the Czech Republic.  As a UMTS standards-based technology, UMTS TDD networks are designed to integrate seamlessly with existing 3G and HSDPA systems, requiring only additional equipment in the BTS´s and specialised data-centric devices for subscribers.