This used to be a topic of huge interest in one of our work groups 18 months back - what will follow 3G in the GSM part in the US. Purists were of the opinion that owing to the natural path of technology evolution, 4G (LTE or WiMAX, another huge debate that still lingers on) will take over the current HSPA networks rolled out by AT&T and T-Mobile. However, the enormous CAPEX involved in installing WiMAX (LTE is still in experimental deployment stages) infrastructure has forced network operators to look at an alternative network till 4G matures as a technology. Enter HSPA+ (also known as HSPA Evolved), a 3.5G network technology that gives the current 3G networks a run for their money. T-Mobile USA has taken a lead by committing nationwide HSPA+ rollout by 2010. To set some context, the current HSPA networks have a max bandwidth of 7.2Mbps, while HSPA+ will offer upto 21Mbps downlink bandwidth. That's a lot of speed on the go. While I didn't believe HSPA+ will ever take off due to the emergence of 4G (Verizon and Vodafone were all ga ga over LTE at all conferences), HSPA+ does offer a lot of flexibility to the network operators since its architecture is still based upon the current HSPA networks (and hence backward compatible), hence the huge backhauling and investment into newer networks can easily be avoided in these troubled financial times.
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