Huawei, a leading information and communication (ICT) solution provider, concluded 3C-HSDPA (three-carrier High Speed Downlink Packet Access) tests in joint efforts with Qualcomm. The test showed that 3C-HSDPA could provide an average downlink data of 63Mbps, a 50% increase over DC-HSDPA (dual-carrier High Speed Uplink Packet Access). The test success marks an important breakthrough of applying carrier aggregation to HSPA+, allowing global UMTS subscribers to enjoy higher speed MBB services with improved experience.

"Increasing popularity of smart devices drives up demands for services such as online streaming and real-time large-file download. How to effectively employ multi-carrier networks, particularly UMTS networks operating on 900 MHz and 2100 MHz frequency bands, has become a widespread concern within the industry." President of Wireless Network GSM/UMTS/CDMA Product Line of Huawei said, "Carrier aggregation supports concurrent utilization of radio resources across multiple carriers to form a larger overall transmission bandwidth access via a user terminal. This effectively helps to provide an immediate increase in downlink data rate over a network. Applying this solution to UMTS networks is considerably advantageous in providing improved UMTS service experience and subscriber loyalty."

UMTS is the most widely deployed mobile broadband networks in today's world and enjoys broad, unrivalled broad subscriber bases. Employing carrier aggregation in UMTS networks is also an important step to ensure seamless subscriber experience over the UMTS-to-LTE evolution process.

As an important introduction to 3GPP Release 10, 3C-HSDPA allows three carriers of the same or different bands to form a larger effective overall bandwidth deliverable to a user terminal. With this solution, remarkable improvement on radio resource utilization and interoperability among radio carriers is made possible. The tests were conducted on Huawei's latest radio access network (RAN) solutions and Qualcomm's Snapdragon™ chip-sported smart devices, which are expected for commercial release by leading manufactures in the latter half of 2014. In previous years dating back to 2013, Huawei in conjunction with Qualcomm completed testing of DC-HSUPA.

Maximizing the spectral efficiency and striving to continuously improve service experience has always been a mutual goal for Huawei and the industry chain partners, achievable through focused cooperation. This 3C-HSDPA test success will surely lead UMTS networks to usher in a revolutionary era of multi-carrier support over the next three to five years. The fruits and gains of these test results will be utilized to offer ultimate high-speed service experience and enjoyment to billions of UMTS subscribers across the globe.