While the GSM standard in its most basic form is incredibly popular, its HSCSD high-speed add-on isn't lost either; it's now available to over 100 million users in 27 countries.
GSM, although very popular, is not the speediest of wireless transmission technologies - that is, unless HSCSD comes into play. Now, HSCSD is available to more than 100 million customers across 27 countries around the world - in Europe, Asia Pacific, South Africa and Israel, and in many cases international roaming is also possible.
Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association, announced recently that 38 GSM networks so far have successfully implemented the feature known as High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD). "This feature enables subscribers of GSM networks to transmit and receive data at rates of up to 4 times the rate of transmission on GSM’s second generation platform," said Conway. "This feature that enables networks to test existing new applications that demand high data rates over the existing infrastructure", he added.
High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data, is part of the GSM family of wireless communications (GSM, HSCSD, GPRS, EDGE and 3GSM) and is a high speed transmission technology which allows users to send and retrieve data over GSM networks at transmission speeds between 28.8 Kbps and 43.2 Kbps by enabling the concurrent usage of up to four traffic channels of a GSM network.
A major question for consumers and corporate users alike has been whether HSCSD will be replaced by the increasingly popular GPRS packet-based transfer technology, but for the time being it seems as though both technologies will be able to co-exist peacefully, at least for some time ahead. It is however likely that GPRS will replace HSCSD as a part of the progression towards packet-based 3G networks, but how quickly the transition will take place depends on how soon operators can offer competitively priced GPRS services and an acceptable penetration of international roaming services.
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