InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[Eneerg]

UMTS 3G Update

2003-5-23 11:16:47
By Petri Possi

The UMTS Forum has recently welcomed the UMTS launch progress in Europe. Austria, Luxembourg, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and UK have all launched commercial UMTS networks, Finland and Norway are almost there and outside Europe, Japan and Australia both have commercial networks running. A lot of operators are getting ready to launch their UMTS network soon and it looks like the bulk of the networks will be launched during 2004. Now some operators are taking the lead and some are playing the waiting game.

Over 100 UMTS licenses have been granted and more will be issued this year, mainly in Eastern Europe. Many Asian countries will issue licenses in 2004 and other continents will follow. Even when financial issues have caused several UMTS license holders to fall, and some shareholding structures have changed, 3G continues to gain a foot print in the mobile telephony market.

NEC and Motorola UMTS handsets are already in the shops and several other manufacturers will be launching soon. About 80 major infrastructure deals have been publicly announced and numerous applications and service contracts have been signed to get systems working. People do not always realise the massive amount of work required to build a mobile network!

Any introduction of new technology has its problems and people need time to understand and adopt the new services. The 1991-1993 GSM network launches had their infancy problems too, so do not expect 3G to be perfect immediately. Now that the first UMTS networks are starting to have coverage and services, we are living interesting times.

This message was posted via a commercial UMTS network.

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