Qualcomm
Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas added:
"Qualcomm's market success coupled with its expertise in 3GPP technologies including HSPA and LTE will fill an essential role in adding to the ecosystem of companies currently serving our board. With the support of Qualcomm, an inventive leader in wireless, 3G Americas will continue to foster tremendous wireless technology advances throughout North, Central and South America."
Right now, HSPA+ will fill a very big hole that will exist within the GSM networks of companies like T-Mobile and AT&T
The 3G Americas press release goes further in mentioning that the flexibility in the advancements within the 3GPP family of technologies offers operators continued technology evolutions to HSPA+ and LTE for higher-speed mobile broadband performance and capacity improvements. Currently, there are 56 HSPA+ networks in 34 countries throughout the world including Rogers in Canada and T-Mobile USA in the United States. Although, we at BSN* have to mention that currently there are very few markets where HSPA+ is available but there are plans for many more in the future. The same statement also goes for AT&T, but their roll-out has just begun. Additionally, LTE continues to progress as the de facto next-generation wireless technology of choice with an expected 23 commercial deployments by year-end 2010 and more than 100 operators across the globe expressing intentions to someday deploy LTE mobile broadband networks.
So, as we expected this announcement is not only a reflection of Qualcomm's involvement and leadership in the 3G/4G space, but also a reflection of the 3GPP's efforts to unify carriers and manufacturers to the point where promotion and implementation of 3.5G and 4G technologies will be smooth and successful.