HS(D)PA and UMTS are high-speed cellphone data protocols. HS(D)PA stands for High Speed (Downlink) Packet Access. The (D) is optional, so I'll just call it HSPA from now on. UMTS stands for Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard. UMTS is a 3G technology, but it is currently being developed into a 4G technology. UMTS is sometimes called 3GSM, because it was meant to succeed the GSM standard. While UMTS is technically based of GSM, it uses the air interface (the soft radio interface between the handset and the cell tower) of W-CDMA. I know it's confusing, but bear with me. A lot of carriers are moving to UMTS as a transition technology before moving to HSPA, since HSPA is an evolution of W-CDMA. HSPA is designed to increase the available data rate by a factor of five or more. HSPA is named as such because it actually creates another W-CDMA channel called the High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH) that is used only for data and operates differently than a regular W-CDMA channel.
If you haven't been paying attention, here's the progression:
CDMA2000/IS-95/cdmaOne/GSM -> W-CDMA -> UMTS ->HS(D)PA
HSPA is fully backwards-compatible with EDGE, the current popular GSM data protocol, as well as W-CDMA, so you don't need to change your handset when HS(D)PA is rolled out, unless you want to take advantage of HSPA speeds.
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My nickname bears no real importance or symbolism. The day I came up with it was January 9, 2005. That was the day I saw Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece "Full Metal Jacket". I was in desperate need for a nickname for Halo 2 and I couldn't really think of anything, so I just changed "jacket" to "parka" and here I am.
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