To advance the case for HSPA operating in the 1800MHz band, Orange France has announced it will begin trials in November to demonstrate that the technology is ready for commercial deployment.
Of equal importance, the company said that it wanted to build the necessary ecosystem by encouraging equipment and terminal vendors to develop products to support this move.
Orange has already persuaded two key technology developers, Ericsson and Qualcomm, to participate, and the two companies have committed to offer support for 2G in the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands, together with 3G and HSPA in the 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2.1GHz bands.
Orange said that this initiative, which is supported by the European Commission's decision to open up GSM spectrum for HSPA, would enable it to make better use of existing spectrum to meet the fast-growing demand for mobile broadband services.
Ericsson would seem to have a relatively easy solution to this Orange France request by offering its multi-standard RBS 6000 base station as a proven test bed.
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