Building on last week’s EV-DO Advanced release, today Nokia Siemens Networks announced enhancements to its HSPA+ solution aimed at improving data session performance on smartphone devices. Similar to last week’s CDMA-focused announcement, this week’s foray is designed to help improve spectral efficiency in the radio network, reduce signaling, and improve device battery life.
NSN’s version of the 3GPP standard, called Continuous Packet Connectivity (CPC), is touted to reduce radio signaling interference, which, in turn, improves uplink capacity by up to 5x. Going further, more efficient transmission between the device and the radio network is what improves battery life. Testing for the solution was conducted at one of NSN’s SmartLab facilities in conjunction with an unnamed Tier-1 operator.
Key Takeaway
As with NSN’s EV-DO Advanced announcement, this move demonstrates the vendor’s commitment to ongoing 3G technology optimization. While LTE roll-outs are gaining steam, 3G will continue to be the dominant mobile broadband bearer technology for many years to come on a worldwide basis. As mobile broadband services become increasingly rich in terms of content delivery and connectivity requirements, solutions that optimize the signaling between device and radio network will likewise become increasingly important.
One key factor will be how the CPC technology interfaces with the multitude of devices in the mobile broadband ecosystem. For this demonstration, the tests were conducted with Nokia devices. However, each major device line has its own operating system. In turn, each operating system has different signaling algorithms that generate varying degrees of signaling load. The impact that individual devices have in terms of signaling requirements for “always on” type mobile broadband services should be a key determinant in the ultimate effectiveness of NSN’s CPC-based solution.
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