3 acquires 3G tech from NEC, Siemens

WHAT AN interesting twist. In the UK, 3G network operator - (Hutchison) 3 - has announced it will acquire the latest 3G technology from NEC.

That's NEC in conjunction with Siemens. And, since 3 has outsourced its network management, that gear will then be run by Ericsson. Talk about making life difficult for yourself.

Anyway, NEC describes its coup as "a real, live, commercial HSDPA pilot." So Manx Telecom's HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Data Packet Access) service wasn't real then? Seemed pretty real when the INQ saw it in action.

The clue, however, is that NEC says its gear is working on "a live network, successfully intermixed with heavy Release 99 traffic, on a live, busy Node B, in Central Reading. " Ah, there's no major conurbations on the Isle of Man, so that's a fair point.

However, NEC can't help but claiming that its HSDPA (which O2 calls super-fast 3G) offering "effectively facilitates high user peak rates of downlink up to 14.4 Mbit/s by placing key packet data processing in the Node B closer to the end users."

So here we go again with outrageous claims for data over cellular. Which we've had before with bog-standard 3G and before that with GPRS, etc.

NEC do admit that they've seen speeds of 1.4 Mbit/s which is "over three times faster than current 3G speeds and more than forty times faster than GPRS." Yeah, but it's also one tenth of what you just claimed was the top speed.

The interesting bit is that 3 is planning to implement HSDPA on its commercial network in Q3-Q4 2006. What's it going to be useful for? Apparently, it will provide "faster download speeds, higher quality content and easy transfer of larger files."

That could just mean an improved full track music download service. Or it might include email. At 1.4 Mbit/s, you'd have WiFi-like connexions speeds over a cellular network. Now that would be useful. µ

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