So, when is HSUPA going to arrive?

I've seen an awful lot of roadmap slides for different wireless technologies this year. And quite a lot of them put HSUPA deployments a year on from HDSPA.

Yet by December 2005, Cingular had launched its service commercially in the US, and O2 had launched on the Isle of Man. Over 50 other networks were in deployment or planning at the end of 2005, with a trickle of launches through H1 2006 and accelerating through H2 to almost 100 networks live now. Even then, the vast majority of usage has been for laptops or PDA-style devices, rather than true handsets.

Thus far, there has been very little noise about real-world HSUPA deployments or even large-scale tests, although various operators have mentioned it in passing. I'd be surprised if we see any commercial launches in H1 2007 - my guess would be perhaps around October. This means a ramp-up of launches in mid-2008, ie probably about 20 months behind HSDPA. It also probably means we shouldn't be expecting handset form-factor HSUPA products to ship in meaningful quantities until perhaps Q4'08 or Q1'09.