Mobile operator 3 is to launch a High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) service within months, it announced today after demonstrating the technology in central London. HSDPA is a faster version of 3G.

3's technical solutions director Graham Baxter said it would launch the new service before the end of the year. "We're pretty confident that they'll be handsets in the stores before Christmas," he added.

Also this week, rival operator T-Mobile launched the MDA Vario II handset, which it said is the first HSDPA-enabled mobile device that can be used on a live network in the UK. This device is an upgraded version of a model already used on T-Mobile’s 3G network.

3 showed off its HSDPA service with datacards and pre-production units of LG 830 and Motorola Razor V3XX handsets. The download rate for a 5MB test file from www.3pp.org was 352kbit/s using standard 3G, and 1.52Mbit/s using the HSDPA service – nearly four-and-a-half times faster.

"We're covering 89 percent of the population and we have 3.5 million customers,” said Baxter. “The network upgrade does involve some hardware cards for very old base stations, but mainly it's a software upgrade, which will be usable by all our customers by the end of the first quarter of next year. But we'll be rolling out to urban areas for the launch.”

Baxter added that HSDPA is more spectrally efficient and reduces latency, making web browsing easier.

Asked about the backhaul capability needed for the faster HSDPA network, Baxter said that 3's capacity planning tools would ensure it did not over-stretch itself financially or cause contention problems in its network backbone. "The key resource here is the air interface and we have a larger allocation than most of our rivals," he added.

3's said the HSDPA launch at Christmas will be followed at the end of 2007 by the launch of a High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) service for faster uploads, and in 2008 it will offer a Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) system to deliver mobile TV.