Report: 70 Million European, 35 Million North American HSPA Subscribers By 2014

Berg Insight has released a report predicting that High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) European subscribers will grow to 70 million and North American subscribers will reach 35 million by 2014.

Research staff at Berg Insight say that 11.6 percent of the total number of broadband connections in Europe by the end of 2008 were HSPA subscribers, and that the number of HSPA and Long Term Evolution (LTE (News - Alert)) personal and laptop computer connected individual consumers grew by 74 percent in 2008 as compared with 2007 to reach 14.6 million.

The market research report says that the deduced figure of 70 million by 2014 was derived by calculating a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) at the rate of 30 percent per year for each year from 2008 till 2014 end.

The report claims that North American market grew by only 4.5 percent -- which is significantly less than Europe’s growth pace -- and predicts that this market segment will grow at a CAGR of 43 percent to total a 35 million subscribers sometime during 2014.

The company predicts that all mobile computers will be available ex-factory with built-in wireless modems and related applications that will constantly source out the best available network in the vicinity.

“Tomorrow’s broadband service providers will have to offer their subscribers multiple access methods,” said Marcus Persson, Telecom Analyst, Berg Insight.

By comparison, another TMCnet HSPA-related report highlighted that wireless broadband (Wi-B (News - Alert)) usage increased about 84 percent in 2008, as compared to 2007, and is expected to be one of the major driving forces in the mobile device communications market, as reported earlier by TMC (News - Alert), and is expected to account for more than 33 percent of all mobile subscribers around the world by 2013.

Persson estimates that LTE will be the most popular mobile device technology and spectrum demanding applications such as IP TV still require wired broadband connections due to the reduced bandwidth in mobile networks caused by limited availability of frequencies.

Consumers, service providers and companies want simultaneous media rich content such as advertising, games, entertainment, and news that are delivered live, on demand and interactively, instantaneous zero latency, crystal clear video, voice and message IP communications, and large data information sharing, immediate transfer and receipt, and storage, says a TMCnet report, and high definition video streaming, Unified Communications (News - Alert), Web 2.0 social networks, Infrastructural virtualization, web based Software as a Solution applications, Network Operations Center offloading, remote backup and super quick environments for cloud computing, says another TMCnet report.

“We believe that LTE will prevail as the main wireless technology also in North America. The idea to construct another nationwide network in the U.S. based on any alternative technology does not seem credible in the current financial climate,” said Persson.

As TMCnet has earlier reported, 3G and third generation partnership project (3GPP) technologies are predicted to account for more than 30 percent of all subscriptions across the globe by 2013, which is significant when compared with 11 percent in 2008. The primary reason attributed to this projection, says the report, is the number of Wi-B infrastructural contracts handed out to several companies and nature of deployments made in the fourth quarter of 2008 (Q408).

Of the 132 deployments made during this period, continues TMCnet’s report, 95 (almost 72 percent) were for High Speed Packet Access (HS PA), which is a technology that improves the throughput for HS Downlink PA to 14.4 Mega bits per second (Mbps) and HS Uplink PA to 5.8Mbps, and is the 3GPP standard for an enhanced Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UTMS) information exchange interface.