Asia Pacific to lead world on super-fast 3G

in brief The Asia Pacific region is leading the world in adopting high-speed packet access (HSPA) -- the higher speed version of 3G.

According to a report by Wireless Intelligence, HSPA connections will reach 40 million by 2008 with the initial impetus coming from the Asia Pacific region. From next year, the report said, European operators will be responsible for increasing uptake.

By 2010, it is predicted that 45 percent of all WCDMA -- one variant of 3G -- connections will be over the super fast 3G standard HSPA: the equivalent of over 270 million subscriptions.

The leap to 45 percent will be a sharp one -- by the end of this year, just six percent of WCDMA connections will be HSPA. The sudden surge in HSPA will be driven by more affordable handsets coming onto the market and operators aggressively migrating customers onto higher-speed networks.

The study also reveals that by the end of the decade, WCDMA connections will outnumber GSM, or 2G, subscriptions in countries where the particular brand of 3G is used.

Meanwhile, overall mobile subscriptions continue to grow across Australia, according to a separate report from analysts IDC. Last year, the mobile subscriber base reached 20.42 million, or 98.4 percent of the population. Mobile service revenue almost topped AU$9.3 billion during the same year, the research found.