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New Verizon cellphone to be usable worldwide

BY BRIAN BERGSTEIN

Associated Press


NEW YORK - Verizon Wireless plans to begin selling this spring a cellphone for use by subscribers around the world as well as in the United States.

The phone will have chips for two kinds of wireless network systems: the CDMA standard used by Verizon in America and the GSM standard used in most of the rest of the world.

In most places, the GSM calls will be carried by Vodafone PLC, the British cellphone company that owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless.

The phone is scheduled to debut in April.

Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Brenda Boyd Raney declined to disclose price or the phone's manufacturers.

She did say the phone was designed for workers for international companies that ``increasingly need and want and ask for a phone of this nature.''

U.S. cellular carriers that employ the GSM standard here, including AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile, already offer phones usable worldwide, but Verizon Wireless would be the first to provide dual service on CDMA and GSM networks in one phone.

Sprint PCS, the other national CDMA carrier in the United States, plans to roll out a dual CDMA/GSM phone later this year, but spokeswoman Suzanne Lammers said she could not offer specifics.

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