HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) is like having your home cable broadband experience delivered to your mobile phone or notebook.

HSPA is part of the GSM 3G network and is (predominately) a software upgrade of the network infrastructure. To use the high speed variant, you need a mobile device that is HSPA-enabled - most new mobile phones and high-end notebooks have these as standard. For a full list of HSPA devices, click here.

HSPA has a great legacy, coming from the GSM family, which delivers mobile communications to over a third of the worlds population. It is the latest technology to enable even faster data rates for mobile users available today. The evolution has seen familiar acroymns such as GPRS (the first packet technology giving around 128kb/s) to EDGE (an enhanced version offering around 240kb/s) and then the introduction of 3G networks increasing the data rate to 384kb/s.

The various enhancements on the HSPA route are as follows:

HSDPA High Speed Downlink Packet ...more

Hidgh speed packet access