HSPA has firmly established itself as the world’s dominant mobile broadband technology and the fastest adopted mobile technology of all time. In the Philippines, Globe Telecom offers a popular mobile broadband service dubbed ‘Tattoo.’

Mobile broadband connections across the globe will surpass 150 million by the end of this year, the GSM association said.

The industry group also reported that there are currently more than 300 networks across 127 countries and approaching 1,500 HSPA-enabled devices readily available. HSPA, a popular broadband wireless technology, has firmly established itself as the world’s dominant mobile broadband technology and the fastest adopted mobile technology of all time, the group said.

"The tremendous success of HSPA demonstrates the enormous ongoing demand for truly mobile broadband access," Dan Warren, director of technology, at GSMA, said.

The executive further added that "HSPA’s leading position is not just important to the mobile industry - by using a single technology for mobile broadband services globally, we avoid the fragmentation that limits its potential to improve the quality of people’s lives."

Market research firm Wireless Intelligence in a report added that in terms of geography, the Asia Pacific region accounts for almost 50 million live HSPA connections today and will have over 56 million by this September.

The European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region currently has over 50 million connections and will have almost 60 million by the end of September this year.

The US currently has almost 32 million HSPA connections with the number expected to rise to nearly 37 million by this September, Wireless Intelligence said.

The phenomenal growth of HSPA is set to continue, with 200 million connections expected by 2010, the firm said.

Wireless Intelligence further said with the number of mobile operators in and vendors committed to the GSM family of technologies (HSPA, HSPA+ and LTE) the success of HSPA mobile broadband is attracting a lot of attention from outside the "traditional" mobile industry.

These industries or sectors will include the consumer electronics, automotive, energy and utility industries are beginning to understand the possibilities of embedding mobile broadband into their products.

Governments around the world are making the right spectrum available to support mobile broadband services today and into the future, ensuring their economies benefit from the GDP growth associated with the technology, the research firm added.

In a related statement, network equipment leader Nokia Siemens meanwhile reported that it has just notched up its 500 millionth mobile data user roughly 40% of global mobile data traffic today.

The firm said with an increasing number of subscribers logging on to the Internet to access and download data on mobile devices, mobile data traffic growth is doubling every year.

In fact, Nokia Siemens Networks expects that at current rates, by 2011, mobile data will overtake voice traffic, growing exponentially until 2013.

The company said driving Nokia Siemens Networks’ leading position in data is the company’s range of packet core solutions that allow operators to handle a huge number of mobile consumers, even if they are using data services heavily, with a very small amount of network equipment.

"We realized early on that to help operators prosper, we would have to be innovative," said Jürgen Walter, head of converged core, Nokia Siemens Networks. "While we can see that data traffic is rocketing, operator revenues are not. This means focusing on lowering the cost of data delivery."

Close to 300 customers use Nokia Siemens Networks’ packet core solutions including operators such as America Movil, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Oi, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, and Vodafone.