What is the difference between WCDMA and HSDPA?

WCDMA offers services such as video calling, conventional cellular voice, text, and access to broadband internet. HSDPA is the acronym for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access. HSDPA is also known as 3.5G.

It is an upgrade to WCDMA. The major difference between mobile technology is the speed of data transmission. HSDPA offers a faster speed of data transmission on support services compared to WCDMA.

It also has a lower latency time compared to WCDMA. WCDMA network has a maximum speed of 384kbps while the HSDPA network has up to 7.2Mbp.

WCDMA is the collective access technology used in 3G mobile networks radio access interface, allowing subscribers to attain more secured communication with much higher data rates. The chief feature behind the WCDMA technique is that the channel bandwidth is used to deliver the data signals over the air network, and to achieve this original signal is mixed with a random noise code, which is also known as Direct Sequence CDMA.

WCDMA uses either TDD, the uplink and downlink data are sent over a single 5MHz channel with time while reaching full-duplex communication. HSDPA is the next stage of 3G UMTS for achieving data speeds for data-oriented functions in which downlink data rates increase.