Sonaecom (a Portuguese Operator) and Huawei have announced a successful launch of Soanecom’ s HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access Evolution) services. This mobile broadband service allows Sonaecom to offer an improved user experience to customers with lower latency and much higher speed. Via 64 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) in the air interface, Sonaecom’ s HSPA+ network supports downlink data rate of up to 21.6 Mbps.
“Due to Huawei’s smooth introduction of HSPA+ on our existing network, the new technology can help us maintain our leading position in the Portuguese competitive market,” said Mr. José Pinto Correia, CTO of Sonaecom. “This new technology will enable our customers to enjoy higher speed and higher quality mobile broadband services, while delivering more capacity to our network.”
To enhance Sonaecom’ s existing UMTS network, Huawei provided an end-to-end solution with state-of-the-art HSPA+ networks and customized mobile broadband modems.
Sonaecom launched HSPA+ services after a successful technology trial carried out in June 2009, in which the maturity of this technology was proven. The trial phase has been supported by Huawei and Qualcomm and uses terminal equipment featuring Qualcomm’ s MDM8200 HSPA+ chipset.
As of Q2 of 2009, Huawei has deployed over 10 commercial HSPA+ networks worldwide – quite an impressive stat if you consider the relative early stages we are still at. Expect things to pick up quite considerably in the next 12-24 months!