Which network standard is HSPA for, GSM or CDMA? [closed]

I'm doing some reading on the 1G - 5G standards to broaden my understanding.

From what I've seen, HSPA was used to accelerate network standards during the 3G era. But the info I'm getting online is conflicting.

Certain articles like this one say it was used on GSM...

In 2005, the 3G network was launched. This faster technology was the first to support video. GSM uses UMTS standard and HSPA (for 3.5G, which is even faster), while CDMA uses EV-DO data service. The main disadvantage of EV-DO is that it is limited to data or voice calls only, never both.

while others like this one say it was used on CDMA...

Although the HSPA uses 3G standards, it delivers higher data transmissions when compared to the CDMA technologies. HSPA was primed at improving 3G standards on CDMA communication protocol.

I even find articles like this one even more confusing because first they say that GSM and CDMA were two separate and incompatible technologies...

CDMA and GSM are the two 2G camps that survived. They remained split during the '00s through the third generation of cellular, which added better data speeds but stayed incompatible.

And yet the article went on to mention that in 3G, WDCMA counted as the "3G GSM"??

Since its inception, GSM has evolved faster than CDMA. WCDMA is considered the 3G version of GSM technology. (?????) To further speed things up, the 3GPP (the GSM governing body) released extensions called HSPA, which have sped GSM networks up to as fast as 42Mbps, at least in theory.

So which protocol was HSPA for? Could someone clarify?

Thanks!

1 Answer

"CDMA" means two things here: it could mean either the general code-division multiple access technology, or the specific cell-phone standards (Qualcomm's IS-95 aka "cdmaOne" and IS-2000 aka "CDMA2000") that use this technology.

The cdmaOne and CDMA2000 standards obviously got the name because they were based on the CDMA technology (whereas GSM was based on TDMA), and people often call them 'CDMA' in a similar way that the word 'wireless' is used to mean 802.11 Wi-Fi.

However, that doesn't mean CDMA is the same thing as cdmaOne/CDMA2000 – it's just the basic radio "multiple access" mechanism, and some newer standards for the GSM family were also based on the CDMA technology even if they are not explicitly named such. The 3G UMTS/HSPA standard is indeed CDMA-based but has nothing to do with "CDMA2000".

In other words, just because 3G UMTS is a logical continuation of 2G GSM, that doesn't mean it's built on exactly the same technology as GSM was. (Finally 4G (LTE) uses different multiple-access technology again – OFDMA, which is also used by Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax).)