+Miffed (did you see that? I'm Google+ addict already ) - HSPA and HSPA+ come into their own when your device (solo or tethered) needs to perform OTA loading or updates of large files. Now that is typically not a problem with apps as they all tend to be a little bit small. But with the likes of iOS being over 600MB in size (by comparison a full Android OTA is less than 90MB on a bad day) the speed derived from HSPA+ become quite essential. Or at least desirable.

Of course, for all other operations the speed behind HSPA and HSPA+ becomes somewhat moot - but what it does is allow greater capacity at the local cell site. And that can't be bad.