O2 has announced that it will begin testing a faster 3G network this summer on the Isle of Man, under the auspices of O2 subsidiary Manx Telecom. The new network will incorporate High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology to accelerate transmissions.

O2 said the system will offer speeds equivalent to those of fixed broadband networks, and so will allow high-speed mobile access to the same business apps that people typically use while in the office.

"Initially the service should give 3.6Mbit/s, but what we don't want to do is promote speed alone," said Mike Short, vice-president for research and development at O2. "We want to get real customer reaction, because we know there's already a need for this type of service," he added.

Vincent Poulbre of analyst firm Ovum said, "HSDPA is primarily for broadband access on the move, ie it's good for nomadic users. The technology should give about 2Mbit/s initially, but I think we're following a similar roadmap to UMTS [Universal Mobile Telecommunications System], so it'll probably be 2007 before there's a large-scale rollout of 3G using HSDPA."

HSDPA offers theoretical peak data transfer rates up to 14.4Mbit/s in the downlink and up to 5.8Mbit/s in the uplink.

"HSDPA is far more spectrally efficient, so you can get far more users in a cell and they can have a far higher data rate," said Victoria Broughton, product manager for communications software vendor Anite's development tools.

Short said that manufacturers probably consider 2006 and 2007 as possible roll-out dates and that services may be geared toward devices with larger screens, and more memory and processing power, to extend the capabilities of applications.

Responding to suggestions that operators may run out of 3G capacity, Lance Hiley, Anite's marketing director, said, "I'd be surprised if there were some capacity issues next year. It seems strange to be upgrading a service that the majority of the country isn't even using yet."

He added, "[Carriers such as O2] want to be seen to be doing something now because they're more than aware of some of the alternative disruptive wireless technologies that could rain on their parade".