Motorola Finds Problems In European HSDPA Trials

Motorola has released some results from its HSDPA trials in Europe (press release), which were designed to find out whether customers would have a good initial perception of the new technology. There are some issues…
First, “HSDPA will provide high speed but can be prone to delays when using applications such as web browsing”, due to a mechanism called ‘state switching’. This moves a user from a high-speed state to a low-speed state, so that when they click on a hyperlink “there can be delays of seconds as the radio network transitions back from a slow to a fast state”. As the article says, “Users will not expect such delays for services marketed as ‘mobile broadband’.” Apparently with extra processing power in the base stations this practice becomes unnecessary, so hopefully carriers will take heed.
Perhaps more seriously: “The trials have shown that video streaming performance degrades when a relatively modest number of users are active. As little as four active users are sufficient to cause video streaming to freeze if scheduling priorities are not set properly.” This is a pretty low number, and it’s not said how many streaming-video users could be supported if the system was set up properly, but I can’t imagine it being that much more.

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