High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
Wow. I would have thought that Cingular - the most reserved of the major carriers here in the U.S. - would have been much more cautious about the move to 3G, but it seems that not only are the investing $4 billion to ramp up, they're moving to a technology called High-Speed Downlink Packet Access. HSDPA is a new acronym for me, I must admit, and I saw that it's also called 3.5G and will allow 400kbps to 700kbps, with insane bursts that will never happen in real life.
That's about three times the real-world speeds that I saw when using my Motorola A845 on AT&T Wireless 3G network (that Cingular bought) here in the Bay Area. From what Techdirt says, Cingular is going to be concentrating on data cards at first, instead of handsets. That doesn't mean that there'll be no 3G handsets available, I'm sure. It just means that the fastest access will be reserved to the data cards at first. I *really* hope they get the Nokia 6630 over here ASAP, I'm chomping at the bit for it.
700kbps? That's awesome, can we stop talking about WiMax now? Hmmm. I wonder what the upload speeds are going to be?
-Russ