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Published: 24 March, 2009
Europe has become a hotbed of trials of next generation HSPA networks, but Austria's mobilkom has claimed the crown of first commercial roll-out. The Telekom Austria subsidiary is offering HSPA+ services, and has one device in the stores, the Huawei E270+ modem, priced at €49.
The cellco's network has theoretical peak download rates of 21Mbps per sector, and comes from Ericsson, which also did systems integration. Later in the year it will be upgraded to the second level of HSPA+, which uses MIMO antenna arrays to boost download maximum to 28.8Mbps, but requires hardware upgrades to support the new antennas.
Initially, the service is available only one hotzone, the 10th District of capital Vienna, and further hotspots will be built out during the second quarter. This follows the pattern that will be common for 3G+ and 4G networks in developed markets - rolling them out step-by-step in selected hotzones of high broadband demand, with laptop-based modems, cards and embedded modules the first devices. As such, these networks support the key growth revenue stream for European cellcos, mobile broadband in netbooks and notebooks.
Alan Hadden, president of the Global Mobile Supplier Association, told MobileEurope: "I have been following mobilkom austria for several years. This company really understands how to shape the market with new technologies. Due to the fact that Austria has the highest mobile broadband penetration in Europe, it is quite logical that the Austrian market leader is the first European operator to introduce HSPA+, since they have to plan the future capacity of their network".
Mobilkom's 3G subscribers have tripled since 2005. It plans to cover 90% of the Austrian population with the UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA network and to introduce the HSUPA 5.7 technology, in addition to HSPA+, in highly congested areas starting from April. This boosts upload to 5.7Mbps peak and only requires a software upgrade to devices.
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