T-Mobile's First HSPA+ Modem Goes On Sale Sunday

adeelarshad82 writes "T-Mobile announced that the webConnect Rocket USB Laptop Stick, the first HSPA+ device for the US, will be available beginning on Sunday, March 14. The device was originally announced at MWC in February. HSPA+ is interesting because it could enable 4G LTE-like speeds using existing 3G infrastructure and according to a hands-on, it smokes Wi-Max. Right now, it's still just for Philadelphia, although we should see several major cities light up with HSPA+ on both coasts well before the end of 2010."

Re:Let's get butt-raped

[hazydave]

Well, the HSPA+ modem is only a potential. HSPA+ is also supported on many smart phones, and even on the download side by the iPhone 3GS (upload is still the basic 384kb/s, not even HSPA-regular speeds). And yeah, ideal HSPA+ download rates hit 7.2Mb/s. Sprint is claiming 6Mb/s for their WiMax "4G" link, while Comcast and Clear claim 8Mb/s and 10Mb/s or more.. funny thing, though.. it's exactly the same WiMax network. As for HSPA+, AT&T claims they'll have rolled it out in 30-40 cities, as of this summer. If you're not in-town, or not in the right town, don't expect to get faster connections. But much of this is marketing hype anyway. If you listen to Sprint ads, you'll expect to find 4G is a real thing. And it is... for computer connections. But they have yet to ship a WiMax phone. And I can sympathize about that "incredible thing" 1000 miles away. Or 3 miles away. Where I live, there's no wired broadband offered. So I'm paying $120 a month for satellite at 1.5Mb/s down, with heinous download limits per day. Three miles away, there's 12+Mb/s cable with no announced per-day limits. This summer, Verizon 4G comes online, too. They're using LTE, the global standard, not WiMax, and on 700MHz (versus 2500MHz for WiMax), so they have a big advantage. They're going hot in 30-40 cities all at once. LTE trials have demonstrated 50Mb/s links, but once it gets real, there are per-client maximums imposed, regardless of the actual cell traffic. I'm in a local totally ready for this as a home connection, there's "Stimulus" money to hit up us rural folks, and yet, I still imagine Verizon hooking this up in places that already get Cable, FiOS, and HPSA+ just dandy.

Re:Portugal

[DarthBling]

...non-3rd-world ones that are lower (Canada, Russia, Brazil, etc)...

Don't mean to nitpik, but Brazil is a third world nation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World [wikipedia.org]

HSPA+ is not HSDPA

[Erich]

The GSM side of 3G standards has many different upgrades to the basic WCDMA air interface:

• HSDPA: 7.2 MBit/sec downlink
• HSUPA: 5MBit/sec uplink
• HSPA+: 21 MBit/sec - 48 MBit/sec downlink

The most interesting thing is that HSPA+ is getting close to the same efficiency (bits/Hz) as LTE; 21MBit/sec in a 5MHz channel vs. 100MBit/sec in a 20MHz channel.