GSM grew by more than 400 million subscribers in 2005, reaching an estimated 1.8 billion customers in 213 countries using various evolutions of the GSM technology.
- UMTS is commercially deployed by 103 operators in 47 countries with an additional 93 operators in 23 other countries that have made significant UMTS announcements (including 4 pre-commercial, 61 planned/in deployment, 8 licenses awarded and 20 in-trial).
- There are more than 250 UMTS devices provided to the market to date, with an increasing number of devices earmarked for North American customers.
- HSDPA has been deployed by ten operators in the past four months, since Cingular Wireless first deployed HSDPA in the United States in December 2005, and there are 71 additional operators publicly committed to deployment. HSDPA has gained considerable momentum and it is expected that all UMTS operators will deploy HSDPA.
“There is early evidence of our prediction that nearly all UMTS operators will evolve their networks to HSDPA. In the past 30 days, we have seen six HSDPA launches, and I expect this trend to continue in 2006 and 2007,” Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas.
http://www.3gamericas.org