A No-Nonsense Foundation for Mobile Broadband Success

While LTE/4G investments and service inaugurations continue to garner the majority of media headlines, a recent GSM/3G Market Update report from the GSA makes it very clear that the success of mobile broadband is being built upon a solid and growing HSPA/HSPA+ foundation (not to be didactic, but certain established operators have welcomed HSPA+ into the 4G marketing club). The migration from HSPA to HSPA+ continues to be the dominant industry trend globally (the GSA estimates over 170 HSPA+ commercial deployments by the end of this year) and the market boasts the availability of 3,227 different HSPA devices. As evidenced in other industry analysis, it will be years before LTE subscriptions compete with HSPA/HSPA+ market share. And affirming HSPA's workhorse role in the mobile broadband landscape, almost every operator outside the Nordic region is expected to rely on HSPA for their LTE 'roaming' coverage and fallback (i.e., anywhere outside major urban centers) for the next five to ten years. These facts may not be too sexy, but we do find them rather impressive.