The hype of 4G LTE might dominate the headlines, but HSPA will remain king — at least for the next five years. The analysts have weighed in and the forecasts show that 4G LTE might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
We’re not immune the hype leading up to fourth generation LTE. The idea of surfing the web faster is at the core of our mobile hearts, but new forecasts from independent telecom analyst Ovum suggests HSPA will be the technology to get us there first, at least in the short term.
Packed in the pages of the latest forecasts, Ovum projects that HSPA connection will hit 1.87 billion by 2015 and grow at a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent. As LTE grabs the headlines it’s easy to forget that HSPA is a firmly established technology with a mature infrastructure and device ecosystem.
Combined with the natural upgrade path to HSPA+, which is being deployed in greater volumes in 2010 and you have a solution sufficient for many operators’ needs for the next five years. So HSPA will have us covered for the next five years, but what about LTE?
According to Ovum, “there is a huge amount of hype surrounding LTE and we expect it to really take off in 2012”. Over time, LTE is expected to become the dominant force but for the time being HSPA and the HSPA+ upgrade path can deliver equally impressive speeds — most importantly, more bang for the buck.
A quick look over at the theoretical speeds of HSPA+ shows download speeds up to 56 Mbit/s and upload speeds of 22 Mbit/s. Compare that with the actual speeds of current LTE networks which top out in the neighborhood of 12 Mbit/s download, 4 Mbit/s upload and the decision to stick with HSPA and move to HSPA+ makes sense (and cents).
Now that we’ve broken down the details and forcecasts it’s time to chime in. Is the 4G LTE hype eating away at the truth behind actual data speeds? Do you think that carriers should sit back and let early adopters make mistakes and build the eco-system? We’re all ears!
via Cellular-News
