MUMBAI: Communications services provider Nortel and Vodafone Spain will be demonstrating mobile calls at 3.6 megabits per second at the 3GSM World Congress 2006 in Barcelona, Spain. The event takes place from 13 to 16 February.
At these rates customers have access to higher speed broadband than the majority of European fixed broadband connections operating at two megabits per second, providing truly mobile broadband connectivity while 1.8 megabits per second will initially be rolled out commercially.
Nortel has upgraded Vodafone Spain's UMTS network covering the World Congress location in Barcelona to deliver live HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) services to a select number of customers' handsets and laptop datacards across the 3GSM world congress event. Both Vodafone Spain and Nortel will use the HSDPA network to support demonstrations for customers and organisations about the mobile services that they can expect to benefit from when the solution is rolled out.
In addition, further demonstrations of the potential of UMTS services in spare spectrum at 900MHz will be given at 3GSM to illustrate its potential use in delivering better mobile broadband coverage. Vodafone and Nortel support the authourisation of 900MHz for UMTS services in various European regions,
including Spain, to increase the availability of mobile broadband services.
UMTS in the 900 MHz band is a cost effective way of delivering high-speed mobile coverage by providing up to 60 per cent site reduction savings in rural areas as well as improved quality of service through enhanced in-building penetration by 25 per cent in urban areas.
Corporate demonstrations of HSDPA and UMTS will use 3G datacards in laptops to show how employees can use mobile broadband to stay connected to corporate networks and benefit from secure connectivity that provides instant messaging, large file data transfer as well as new applications for the mobile workforce.
Demonstrations of the consumer applications for HSDPA will involve new handsets with high quality live TV, High Definition video on demand, MP3 streaming and presence awareness amongst groups of friends. Vodafone director global radio and access networks Fergal Kelly says, "Vodafone has seen a huge increase in the number of 3G (UMTS) users in Spain in the last few months, with Christmas being a very busy period
"Providing a clear evolution of these services in both speed, by upgrading to HSDPA with Nortel, and coverage, through the potential use of the 900MHz spectrum in Spain is vital to highlight where our services are moving and how we are going to continue to delight our customers into 2006 and beyond."
Nortel VP GSM/UMTS portfolio Alain Biston says, "As we lead the transition of HSDPA from the laboratory into live, commercial, deployments, we are working hard with operators such as Vodafone to highlight the personal and work benefits increased broadband mobile coverage can bring.
"At 3GSM World Congress, we are aiming to show how to bring true Enterprise mobility and connectivity to Europe as well as how to deliver the entertainment services of the future."
