DoCoMo's Prototype HSDPA Handsets
NTT DoCoMo just announced three prototype high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) handsets developed with Fujitsu, Motorola (Wow!) and NEC. HSDPA, a high-speed packet transmission technology standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project, offers a theoretical maximum downlink speed of about 14 Mbps. The handsets will be demonstrated at DoCoMo’s booth at the 3GSM World Congress 2006 in Barcelona, Spain from February 13 to 16.
DoCoMo aims to start HSDPA services sometime between July and September 2006 (as per our recent bold prediction for 2006 — Eds).
At present, the prototype handsets have maximum speeds of 3.6 Mbps, 10 times faster than current 3G FOMA handsets. HSDPA is expected to facilitate new services by enabling high-volume downloads and the viewing of highly rich content. These would become the first announced handsets to become available anywhere; we wonder about getting a flat-rate HSDPA data card around that time as well..!!
— WWJ Editors
