Rogers Wireless said Tuesday it has begun rolling out a wireless network with top download speeds nearly three times as fast as its current network.

The mobile phone division of Rogers Communications Inc. said deployment of a network using high speed packet access plus (HSPA+) wireless technology has begun in the Greater Toronto Area and will expand to other regions across the country.

Rogers said the new network would improve the top download speeds to mobile phones from a maximum of 7.2 Mbps under the company's current HSPA network to 21 Mbps.

Rogers said it is the first wireless company in North America to launch an HSPA+ network and only the sixth to do so worldwide.

"The super-charged data speeds achieved with Rogers' 21 Mbps upgrade will enable us to support more customers with the most innovative mobile services well into the future, while our customers will experience mobile broadband at speeds like what they experience at home and at work," said Rogers Wireless president Rob Bruce.

The upgrade announcement comes as the company's main two competitors — BCE Inc. and Telus Inc. — work to upgrade their networks to add HSPA wireless technology.

Last fall, Bell and Telus announced they would work together to overlay their existing wireless networks with HSPA, a cellular technology more popular around the world and one Rogers has been using since 2005.

Carriers move towards next-generation networks

Bell and Telus currently use a communications standard known code division multiple access (CDMA) for their networks. While CDMA technology is common in North America, most of the rest of the world uses the rival Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) — of which HSPA technology is one version.

Rogers has had a tactical advantage in the Canadian wireless market over Bell and Telus because some cellphones, including Apple Inc.'s iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry Bold, are made for the GSM standard and are not compatible with CDMA.

New wireless entrants Globalive and Quebecor have both said they also plan to roll out GSM/HSPA networks when they launch in the next year, while DAVE Wireless, another new entrant, said it plans to launch the more advanced HSPA+ network.

HSPA+ is an improvement over HSPA and is also seen as a stepping stone to the adoption of fourth-generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, a developing global standard for even more advanced phone capabilities and much faster speeds than currently available.

Building an LTE network is also the eventual goal of Bell and Telus and their network upgrade.

The technology behind the global standard has also become an issue nationally with Sweden's LM Ericsson bidding for some of Nortel Network's advanced wireless communications technology.

Over the weekend, Ericsson emerged as the victor in the auction of Nortel's wireless business with a bid of $1.13 billion US, giving the company access to Nortel's LTE, or long-term evolution, mobile technology.

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said the LTE was partly funded with Canadian taxpayer money, and said he doesn't want it going to a foreign company.