AT&T leads in global HSPA penetration

As the number of high-speed packet access (HSPA) subscribers approaches the 150 million mark globally, one name stands out on GSM Association’s list of most active HSPA operators: AT&T (NYSE:T). According to the GSMA, AT&T has 28.6 million HSPA connections, accounting for 21% of all HSPA subscriptions worldwide.

In fact, AT&T eclipses most of the major names in the global GSM operator community in terms of penetration. Vodafone (NYSE:VOD) and O2 (NYSE:TEF) in the UK have 2.1 million and 2.3 million HSPA subscribers, while NTT DoCoMo (NYSE:DCM) and Softbank in Japan have 5.1 million and 4.3 million respectively. The only operators approaching AT&T’s penetration levels are the Korean service providers, KT (NYSE:KTC) and SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM), which like AT&T launched their wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA) networks with the HSPA upgrade installed on day one. Still, KT has 9.5 million and SK has 12.4 million HSPA subscribers, less than half the number of AT&T.

AT&T’s lead in HSPA ironically is a direct result of it being so late to 3G. Deploying its first commercial 3G networks in late 2005, AT&T (then Cingular) was several years behind its Asian and European counterparts, but by waiting AT&T was also able to take advantage of new HSPA technologies as they emerged. The result: every AT&T 3G customer is an HSPA customer, while most other global operators have large stores of W-CDMA customers, whose network connections are slower but 3G nonetheless. DoCoMo, for instance, has 48 million W-CDMA subscribers on top of its 5.1 million HSPA customers.

T-Mobile USA (NYSE:DT), which launched 3G just last year, also only has HSPA subscribers on its 3G network—and a large number of them at that, considering its footprint is far from nationwide. New devices like the Android G1 have ballooned T-Mobile’s HSPA subscriber base to 2.6 million, putting it just outside of the global top 10, according to the GSMA.

Globally, 230 operators have deployed the HSPA upgrade and have a signed up a total of 131 million HSPA customers. The GSMA said that number is quickly growing, surpassing the 150 million mark by the end of the summer and reaching the 200 million in the first quarter of 2010. There are 255 million W-CDMA subscribers on 236 global networks, the GSMA report found, bringing the total number of UMTS 3G subscribers to 386 million. CDMA operators have also enjoyed high 3G and mobile broadband growth. CDMA 1X EV-DO customers grew from 97 million to 120 million between March of 2008 and March of 2009, making EV-DO a component of one quarter of all CDMA 1X connections.

Even though it was the first to deploy HSPA, AT&T has since been leapfrogged by other operators who have latched on to later-stage, faster iterations of the UMTS standard. Several operators have moved on to the final evolution of HSPA, supporting 14.4 Mb/s of capacity on a single channel, while Telstra in Australia has moved to evolved HSPA (or HSPA+), giving it 21 Mb/s of downlink capacity. AT&T’s networks have a maximum capacity of 3.6 Mb/s, but it is now in the process of upgrading to 7.2 Mb/s and has already started selling devices such as the iPhone 3G S, that can support the faster speeds. AT&T also plans to skip the upgrade to 14.4 Mb/s and move directly to HSPA+ before launching its 4G long-term evolution (LTE) network.