3G will be the biggest enabler of mobile broadband for the next five years, according to Qualcomm, with the challenge being to improve the data carrying capacity of CDMA by adopting the enhancement technologies HSPA and EV-DO.
"3G will enable 80 per cent of mobile broadband subscriptions in 2013", Dr Rasmus Hellberg, director of 
technical marketing at Qualcomm, told the Avren Next Generation Networks meeting in Bath yesterday.
The 3G data capacity enhancement mechanisms will be: first, the spectral efficiencies to be derived from the introduction of HSPA+ and EV-DO Rev B; second, the introduction 
of HSPA+ R8 and EV-DO Rev B multicarrier technologies to increase bursty applications capacity; third, the introduction of voice over HSPA, VoIP over EV-DO and 1X Advanced to free up spectrum for data; and fourth, the adoption of advanced topologies to improve performance such as the addition of remote radioheads, picocells and femtocells, plus the application of smart network techniques and optimisations.
HSPA+ R7 "almost doubles" HSPA capacity, according to Hellberg, increasing the 3.5Mbps of HSPA to 6.2 Mbps on the downlink, and the 2.2Mbps of the HSPA uplink to 3.7Mbps.
EV-DO, already deployed in India and to be deployed in China, delivers 14.7Mbps forward link speed, increases uplink speed by 65 per cent and improves VoIP capacity by 45 per cent, said Hellberg.
Multicarrier techniques more than double capacity for bursty applications, said Hellberg, and voice over HSPA more than doubles capacity freeing up significant capacity for data.
"The next significant performance leap is bringing transmitters closer to the user", said Hellberg by the introduction of operator-deployed picocells and user-deployed femtocells to give increased capacity and coverage. "Femtocells increase capacity 10X beyond what technology alone could provide", said Hellberg.
Hellberg claimed that HSPA+ had similar spectral efficiency and similar peak data rates to LTE which, he reckoned, would find its usefulness in heavy data usage urban areas.
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