As wireless carriers look to drive revenue from data, there's a lot of talk about next-generation networks - be they UMTS, EVDO, 1X, etc. During Rogers Communications' fourth-quarter conference call last week, CEO Nadir Mohamed talked a lot about HSDPA, which is the seen as the evolution of UMTS technology.
In a recent report, TD Securities said it was impressed with Nortel's technology during demos at the 3GSM show in Cannes. "Nortel was only vendor actually willing to show off HDSPA in public view using a standard PC card as the consumer terminal," TD said. "Most other vendors hid their “solution” from inspection by conference-goers. Nortel hooked up a HSDPA-enabled base station to the existing commercial UMTS network in Cannes (built by Nortel last year, owned by Orange).
TD also came away from Cannes with some questions about how carriers are going to drive revenue from wireless broadband technology. Most executives, it discovered, were strong on hyperbole but vague on details. The two big questions are what applications wll be pumped down the pipe (e-mail, music, real Web, etc.) and how much people are willing to spend for mobile speed.