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WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
First Launch of Commercial UMTS Service in The Western Hemisphere Applauded by 3G Americas
Bellevue, WA, July 20, 2004 -
3G Americas, a wireless trade organization representing the GSM family of technologies, heralded the arrival of commercial 3G UMTS high-speed wireless data services in the Western Hemisphere with the launch announced today by AT&T Wireless in four cities in the United States: Detroit, San Francisco, Phoenix and Seattle.
Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas stated, "3G Americas commends AT&T Wireless for the first UMTS commercial launch in the Americas. This signifies the Americas is a leader in the global wireless 3G eco-system by providing high-speed wireless data services to American customers."
The number of UMTS commercial launches is increasing rapidly with 62 UMTS networks in service today in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and now North America. An additional 75 UMTS networks around the world are in deployment, licensing or pre-commercial status.
In the U.S., Cingular Wireless has also announced its support for UMTS technology. The operator has deployed a trial UMTS-HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) network in Atlanta, and recently issued a Request for Proposal to UMTS vendors for the deployment of UMTS in select markets beginning in 2005 in both the 850 and 1900 MHz spectrum bands.
Pearson continued, "Unlike competitive 3G technologies, the flexibility of UMTS provides operators and their customers the opportunity to fully optimize their networks and devices by offering simultaneous voice and high speed data services."
UMTS, also called Wideband CDMA, has been chosen by eight of the world's ten largest mobile operators for 3G services and is the world's leading standard for 3G services in terms of overall number of operator commitments. UMTS builds naturally on existing investments in GSM -- the world's leading 2G mobile choice that has more than one billion customers worldwide. The total number of 3G/UMTS customers already surpasses 6 million globally, representing a growth rate significantly higher than that of GSM at its deployment more than ten years ago.
Vicki Livingston, Director of Marketing for 3G Americas commented, "UMTS is the perfect complement to EDGE technology deployments offering interoperability, coverage and high-speed data for customers." Livingston added, "There are more than 100 operators in various stages of EDGE network readiness and we believe numerous operators throughout the world will utilize complementary EDGE and UMTS networks to provide 3G services to their customers."
For a complete list of the deployment status of UMTS, visit:
www.3gamericas.org/PDFs/umts_worldwide.pdf.
About 3G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Wireless Technology
The mission of 3G Americas is to promote and facilitate the seamless deployment of GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and UMTS (WCDMA) throughout the Americas for the benefit of consumers. The organization fully supports the Third Generation technology migration strategy GSM/GPRS/EDGE and UMTS adopted by many operators in the Americas that is expected to account for up to 85% of next-generation customers worldwide. 3G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, WA with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas, TX. For more information, visit our website at www.3gamericas.org.
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