Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+)

Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+), also known as the HSPA Evolution, is a 3G wireless communication technology developed by the 3GPP (starting with Release 7) as an upgrade to the HSPA standard. It offers download speeds of up to 168 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 22 Mbps (as of Release 10). The platform’s features were first enabled in 2008.

HSPA+ is based on wide-band Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), and has been touted by some as a 4G network. In reality, it’s just an improved version of 3G with faster user data rates similar to the latest version of Long-Term Evolution (LTE), with which it shares similar download and upload speeds, but has a different air interface. HSPA+ has an improved multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna and radio access network (RAN), which makes it 11 times faster than the HSPA technology that preceded it.