Now they are regularly battling one another to deliver the latest performance boost, and are amassing huge piles of 3G/4G-related intellectual property. In the latest example, Huawei has claimed a record uplink rate for HSPA, topping a previous record set earlier this year by ZTE.
Huawei says its latest HSUPA demonstration reached peak single-user uplink data rates of 20Mbps, using dual-carrier techniques and 16QAM modulation. The demonstration was based on Huawei's UMTS algorithms.
The company commented that uplink speed is increasingly important to customer satisfaction because of the rising tendency to upload and share images and videos, and puts more tools in the hands of multimedia content providers. A spokesperson said addressing the uplink bottleneck – given the far lower speeds than those achieved on the downlink – was one of the biggest challenges for the mobile industry.
In March, ZTE achieved 15.2Mbps uplink speeds in a single cell demonstration in China, topping the previous record of 12Mbps. ZTE used an HSUPA capacity improvement solution that included interference cancellation technology, multi-antenna independent scheduling, and four receiving antennas – all tools which did not require an upgrade of terminals.
“Social networking and multimedia services have enabled more users to upload content onto networks, creating issues for operators,” said ZTE‘s product general manager Yingchun at the time.