Subject: [NEXTEL-1] News: UMTS Forum opens the 3G World Congress and advocates the benefits of W-CDM

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:12:06 -0500

-------- Original Message --------
From: "syedmhassan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: News: UMTS Forum opens the 3G World Congress and advocates the benefits
of W-CDM

UMTS Forum opens the 3G World Congress and advocates the benefits of 
W-CDMA for Asia

04 Nov 2003

The UMTS Forum, the trade body promoting the global uptake of UMTS 
third generation mobile services, today stressed the benefits of W-
CDMA 3G technology for the Asian market. The UMTS Forum also 
summarised the key UMTS 3G milestones to date and outlined the 
significant opportunities which lie ahead.

Opening the 3G World Congress, hosted in Bangkok by IIR Asia, Jean-
Pierre Bienaimé, chairman of the UMTS Forum addressed the issue of 
returns on investment from 3G. He stated that UMTS is a "medium 
term" business opportunity, rather than an overnight revenue 
generator, and that 3G players should not be discouraged in the 
short term. He also urged that Asian countries yet to make their 
licensing decisions would benefit from timely licensing so they do 
not miss out on the global UMTS opportunity.

Bienaimé went on to emphasise the significance of the potential of 
UMTS for Asian markets and stressed that with their strong 
reputation for software development they can leverage the huge 
addressable customer base for mobile services and applications, 
providing a valuable export opportunity for Asian IPRs.

"UMTS is already a reality in Asia with both NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone 
KK (formerly J-Phone) having launched their respective offerings. 
NTT DoCoMo now has over one million subscribers to its FOMA service 
and this number is growing every day. During 2003 we saw a number of 
service launches in Europe, as well as Australia, with Hutchison's 3 
leading the evolution from GSM to UMTS. We expect to see even more 
launches throughout 2004/05.

"W-CDMA allows operators to build on the investments already made in 
GSM, the world's most popular 2G technology choice with almost 1 
billion GSM customers worldwide. This means economies of scale for 
manufacturers, increased roaming revenues for operators and the 
largest choice of cost-effective terminals for end users." Beinaimé 
stated.

Bienaimé also covered the issue of spectrum and stated that UMTS has 
far greater capacity to support voice and high-speed data at a far 
lower cost than that of 2G, which in some countries is beginning to 
run out. 3G will open up new globally harmonised spectrum of which 
industry players can take full advantage.

It is predicted that W-CDMA customers will hit the two million mark 
at the end of 2003, showing that despite a relatively slow start 
subscriber figures are now starting to pick up. These figures 
represent a much faster growth than that of GSM within the same 
timeframe. 

Also speaking at the event was Josef Huber, vice chairman of the 
UMTS Forum, who discussed the business models required for each 
service category from mobile internet access to infotainment and 
messaging to mixed real-time and non real-time services.

Source:
http://www.umts-forum.org/servlet/dycon/ztumts/umts/Live/en/umts/News_PR_Article041103

Best regards
Syed Hassan

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