Cingular Expanding Tech Services

Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Cingular will roll out its HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) in the Seattle area by year end. The technology will allow users to speak and exchange data simultaneously, with data flowing at higher rates than UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System). Cingular claims "HSDPA offers download speeds between 400 kilobits per second and 700 kbps, with uploads at about 100 kbps."

Charles Golvin at Forrester Research said, "Cingular's claims to those speeds sound conservative and real-world, given that HSDPA has never been tried in the real world, only in laboratories at this point."

Golvin pointed out that in the lab, HSDPA achieved "downloads speeds of up to 3 megabits per second, with the long-term ability to scale up to 14 mbps." Golvin stated that "it's a much better approach to set reasonable expectations and hope to exceed them."