Mobile working Toolkit

Nortel pushes Super 3G to new heights

Graeme Wearden ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 23 Dec 2005 12:15 GMT

Nortel claimed on Friday to have reached a new milestone for Super 3G by demonstrating a data connection at a speed of 3.6Mbps.

Super 3G, or high-speed data packet access (HSDPA), is an enhancement to today's 3G networks that offers the promise of much faster connectivity. Nortel claims that this is the first time that a live HSDPA datacard call with a transmission rate of 3.6Mbps has been demonstrated in test conditions.

The testing took place at Nortel's research campus in Chateaufort, France, in partnership with Option, which designs and manufactures wireless datacards.

The demonstrations included using a HSDPA datacard in a laptop while in a moving car, which Nortel claims "illustrates the suitability of mobile wireless broadband for high quality, live TV, High Definition video on demand, MP3 download as well as new applications for the mobile workforce".

The datacard was based on Qualcomm's MSM6280 chipset. Last month, Qualcomm announced that the MSM6280 now handled speeds of 3.6Mbps, and added that it expected to push this to 7.2Mbps in the near future.

Europe's first HSDPA network was opened on the Isle of Man last month by O2. ZDNet UK carried out tests on O2's network after it launched, and measured the peak download speed at 1.29Mbps with an average over 10 minutes of 480Kbps. 300Kbps streamed video displayed perfectly.