Ericsson wins LG Electronics contract for mobile broadband

The world's lding telecom network equipment maker Ericsson has been selected by LG Electronics to provide mobile broadband modules based on high speed packet access (HSPA), the world's most widely commercially deployed technology for mobile broadband.

LG Electronics notebooks and netbooks will include mobile broadband modules from Ericsson in Q3 2008.

"We are excited to work with LG Electronics to give consumers and business users the freedom and flexibility to access internet in the way they want it, wherever they are." says Mats Norin, vice president, mobile broadband modules, Ericsson. "Ericsson is also very pleased to be selected to provide mobile broadband modules to LG Electronics' netbooks which is a segment that is forecasted to grow fast"

Ericsson's mobile broadband modules provide the end user with a simple and cost effective solution for broadband access while on the go. Seamlessly integrated with and optimised to work within the notebook, the built-in mobile broadband module provides superior downloading and uploading performance and takes less power from the battery.

Leveraging Ericsson's in-house HSPA chipset technology and the company's economies of scale and longstanding operator relationships, Ericsson can offer a very competitive mobile broadband module solution that will help further drive a mass market for mobile broadband.

HSPA is a collection of mobile telephony protocols that extend and improve the performance of existing UMTS protocols. Two standards, HSDPA and HSUPA, have been established and a further standard, HSPA+, is soon to be released. Sweden-based Ericsson is a pioneer in this field and demonstrated the first use of this technology in India as far back as 2006. (See: Ericsson conducts first HSDPA demonstration in India )

HSDPA provides improved theoretical downlink performance of up to 14.4 Mbit/s. Existing deployments provide up to 7.2 Mbit/s in downlink. Up-link performance is a maximum of 384 kbit/s. HSUPA provides improved up-link performance of up to 5.76 Mbit/s theoretically.

HSPA provides a DSL-like experience wirelessly with true mobility and there are currently more than 207 commercially deployed HSPA networks globally, serving more than one billion subscribers.

Market projections indicate that in 2011, approximately 200 million notebooks will ship annually and Ericsson anticipates that 50 per cent of those notebooks will feature a built-in HSPA mobile broadband module. Users will increasingly have the option to take their broadband connections with them, delivering on the promise of full service broadband, which is anytime, anywhere access from the screen or device of choice.