Mobile Communications: One of Life's Essential Resources

BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwire - Oct 23, 2012) - 4G Americas, a wireless industry trade association representing the 3GPP family of technologies, today announced that it has published a valuable resource guide to better the understanding of the 3GPP standards and their evolution to 4G and beyond. The white paper titled, 4G Mobile Broadband Evolution: Release 10, Release 11 and Beyond - HSPA+, SAE/LTE and LTE-Advanced, provides an in-depth examination of 3GPP technology standards from a technical, business and applications standpoint. 

"Mobile communications has become an invaluable resource as it advances human and economic development -- from providing reliable communication and emergency services, to accessing health information and making cash payments, to spurring job creation, and stimulating citizen involvement in democratic processes," said Chris Pearson, President of 4G Americas. "At the grassroots level, such success may be attributed to the careful science of technology standards developed by the wireless industry at 3GPP." 

Moving technology from a detailed standard on a piece of paper to real world commercial deployments has been the global success story for the 3GPP technology family. This includes the current phenomena of HSPA, HSPA+ and LTE mobile broadband, which represents more than one billion connections worldwide today and 17 percent of all mobile connections. The uptake of 3GPP mobile broadband services is forecast to grow these connections to 57 percent of the 8.9 billion total mobile connections expected by 2017.

The global demand for wireless data services continues to drive the rapid growth of HSPA technology with more than 475 commercial networks, of which 223 have been upgraded to HSPA+. There is a long life ahead for HSPA+ with 3GPP Rel-11 standards work, to be finalized in the fourth quarter of 2012 and expected to elevate HSPA+ peak theoretical download speeds up to 336 Mbps. By 2017, it is projected that 85 percent of the world's population will be covered by HSPA networks.

LTE, which currently offers peak theoretical downlink speeds in excess of 300 Mbps, is commercially available on more than 100 networks today while commitments to LTE total more than 450 worldwide. Although subscriber numbers are just beginning to grow, the ecosystem is vibrant and more than 415 LTE devices are available. LTE-Advanced will offer continued development of all levels of performance, including peak theoretical downlink speeds in excess of 1 Gbps.

"The mobile industry is moving forward with innovative new 3GPP network architecture to maximize capacity, spectral efficiency and user experience," stated Jim Seymour, Alcatel-Lucent Wireless CTO, Bell Labs Fellow, and the project leader of the 4G Americas working group that authored the white paper. "The world is evolving towards LTE as the technology of choice for next-generation networks, and features such as Heterogeneous Networks Enhancements, Self-Organizing Networks, Coordinated Multi-Point, Carrier Aggregation and Multi-Input Multiple Output Antenna Systems will be the next steps in LTE evolution to provide the best possible service delivery."

The white paper lays out the innovations in 3GPP Rel-10, including HSPA+ enhancements and the introduction of LTE-Advanced. Additionally, details on Rel-11 are explained with further HSPA+, LTE-Advanced and other network and service related enhancements, for which specifications were functionally frozen in September 2012. Finally, the paper outlines planning for Rel-12 and beyond. Rel-12 is targeted for a functional freeze date of June 2014. 

4G Mobile Broadband Evolution: Release 10, Release 11 and Beyond - HSPA+, SAE/LTE and LTE-Advanced, and its corresponding slide presentation, was written collaboratively by members of 4G Americas and is available for free download at: www.4gamericas.org

About 4G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Mobile Broadband Technology
4G Americas is an industry trade organization composed of leading telecommunications service providers and manufacturers. The organization's mission is to promote, facilitate and advocate for the deployment and adoption of the 3GPP family of technologies throughout the Americas. 4G Americas contributes to the successful commercial rollout of 3GPP mobile broadband technologies across the Americas and their place as the No. 1 technology family in the region. The organization aims to develop the expansive wireless ecosystem of networks, devices, and applications enabled by GSM and its evolution to LTE. 4G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas. More information is available at www.4gamericas.org.

4G Americas' Board of Governors members include: Alcatel-Lucent, América Móvil, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, CommScope, Entel, Ericsson, Gemalto, HP, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks, Openwave Mobility, Powerwave, Qualcomm, Research In Motion (RIM), Rogers, T-Mobile USA and Telefónica.