Qualcomm has announced in a press release today that the company intends to begin preliminary trials of the HSPA+ protocol with carriers Hutchison 3G, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Telstra.
The HSPA+ protocol is a further evolution of W-CDMA HSDPA access allowing for a stated maximum download speed of 28Mbps using 2×2 MIMO transmission and 21Mbps using QAM modulation on HSDPA.
With the trials beginning this year, Qualcomm expects to commercially launch the protocol in 2009 with the MDM8200 chipset being used as the test bed for the trials.
