Mobile Internet: the wireless convergence

HSPA's battle

Meanwhile, Hutchison and Telstra, along with mobile manufacturers Ericsson and LG, have snubbed WiMax in favour of HSPA and other 3G technologies.

According to Klaas Raaijmakers, who is the Head of Broadband of Hutchison's 3 Mobile, the telecommunications company now is servicing a larger, more diverse market than ever before.

"We're moving away from the traditional tech-savvy users; we're seeing more female customers, for example," Raaijmakers said, citing greater affordability, convenience and portability between home, work, places of study, and overseas as customer-reported benefits.

Meanwhile, Airspan's Stepa said that 3G and WiMax may not necessarily be competing directly for market share.

"We're not fighting 3G", he said, noting that vendors and network carriers tend to "choose their horses" when it comes down to delivering a service in any particular area.

Motorola and Samsung are two examples of vendors that manufacture mobile phones for both WiMax and 3G networks.

Rob Inshaw, Nortel Network's Australia and New Zealand General Manager of Carrier Solutions, agrees.

"3G and WiMax service different markets," he said, forecasting that WiMax is likely to appeal to more tech-savvy users who value mobile access to the Internet more than traditional telephony services.

Inshaw cited increased and improved communication applications, a hyperconnected environment in which people are using multiple devices to connect to other people and other machines, as well as the availability of what he called "true broadband" as driving forces behind the development of more advanced wireless technologies.

Currently available HSDPA networks support speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps. Future incarnations of the technology, dubbed HSPA Evolved, are expected to deliver speeds of 42 Mbps, and will involve antenna array technologies.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks are next on the 3G roadmap. LTE networks are expected to achieve downlink speeds of up to 200 Mbps and uplink speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

"What is true broadband? I think it's being able to do what you want, when you want," Inshaw said, estimating that Web services should ideally take a maximum of four seconds to load before the average user tends to lose interest.

Forecasting spectrum capacity problems to hinder the speeds deliverable by 3G technologies, Inshaw said that future developments in the 3G space may bring the services available to 3G networks closer to those offered by WiMax.

"3G will continue to evolve over the next four years, and will eventually offer similar services to WiMax," he said.

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