The number of HSPA connections worldwide has passed the 200 million mark and looks set to grow rapidly with operators committing to hefty mobile broadband investment, according to new figures from the GSMA.
Operators will spend up to $72 billion on mobile broadband technologies – including HSPA/HSPA+, WCDMA and EVDO/CDMA – in 2010 alone, the industry body revealed, citing statistics from Deutsche Bank.
New HSPA connections currently stand at around 9 million per month, but will rise to "13 million per month by the end of this year," Dan Warren, director of technology at the GSMA, told Total Telecom when the figures were published.
HSPA connections will grow to 342 million by the end of 2010, he predicted.
Europe will account for the lion's share of these, with 120 million connections by year-end, followed by Asia-Pacific with 116 million and North America with 58 million.
However, Europe will fall behind the other regions in terms of mobile broadband spend this year.
While European operators will plough up to $14 billion into technologies like HSPA and WCDMA, their North American counterparts have earmarked capex of up to $19 billion and in Asia-Pacific the figure could come in at $34 billion.
According to the GSMA, mobile broadband will suck up 52% of operators' investments in mobile infrastructure worldwide in 2010. North America will come in well ahead of that though, with operators ploughing 80% of their mobile capex into mobile broadband.
The world's 200 million HSPA subscribers currently have 1,800 HSPA-enabled devices to choose from, from 150-plus suppliers.
There are 294 commercially live HSPA networks in 123 countries; 183 of those networks deliver peak data rates of over 3.6 Mbps. There are 37 commercially live HSPA+ networks, capable of data speeds of up to 21 Mbps.
Labels: Mobile operators
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