GSM Wireless Continues Rapid Growth

Americas : GSM increased its digital cellular subscriber base in the Americas by 54% in 2002, the largest percentage gain of any wireless technology in the region. In Latin America, GSM increased its subscriber base by 90% in 2002, largely in the second half of the year when several new GSM networks were commercially launched. Globally, GSM added over 165 million new customers in 2002 - adding more new customers than the total subscriber base of any other mobile wireless technology in the world.

Chris Pearson, Executive Vice President of 3G Americas stated, "The tremendous growth in GSM throughout the Americas could be attributed to the current and planned migration by 24 TDMA operators in the region to GSM. In addition, there were ten new GSM network deployments in the Americas since June 2002. Operators continue to choose the GSM migration path based on its technical merits, economies of scale, roaming, and business case advantages over other competing technologies."

Pearson added, "Due to the migration trend of TDMA operators, we expect GSM to become the leading wireless technology in the Americas by 2007. "

"Investors in wireless networks in Latin America and the Caribbean continue to make GSM the technology of choice," remarked Dr. Richard Downes, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas. "GSM has arrived - or will soon arrive - in every country in the region. From January 2000 to December 2002, 24 out of 27 newly licensed operators have selected GSM." Downes added, "This adoption rate is moving the dream of an interoperable pan-regional GSM network ever closer to reality."

Based on recent subscriber data reported by EMC, GSM has 8.5 million subscribers in Latin America, a 90% growth rate in just one year, and 17.6 million subscribers in the United States and Canada, a 41% growth rate in 2002.

On a global basis, GSM/GPRS data services are commercially available from 147 operators in 58 countries according to EMC, and subscribers to GPRS grew by 47% in the fourth quarter of 2002. The GSM family of wireless service platforms - GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and WCDMA - represents about 72% of the world's digital wireless customers today. There are 825 million GSM customers globally on 640 networks (469 operators) in 175 countries, making GSM the technology of choice for the world.

This Press Release Sponsored by AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES

TODAY'S PRESS RELEASES

ADVFN, the UK's number one stocks and shares Web site, is providing live stocks and shares information to investors on the move. The first advertiser of this new service is Intel.

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS virus outbreak has forced the event organizers of the TD-SCDMA conference in Beijing this week to cancel.

Visa International, Nippon Shinpan, OMC Card and AEON Credit today announced the start of a pilot program, together with NTT DoCoMo, Inc., to test a service for making credit card payments at bricks and mortar merchants via DoCoMo 504i and 504iS series mobile phones, which are equipped with infrared transmission (IrDA) ports.

Ericsson has been chosen by América Móvil as main supplier for the Core Infrastructure and one of the principal suppliers for the Radio Infrastructure for a GSM and EDGE Network to complement the existing TDMA network of its Brazilian subsidiary Telecom Americas.

The development follows a European wide agreement to distribute the games via retail packs announced today between Digital Bridges, a world leader in mobile entertainment solutions and Namco Europe

SM increased its digital cellular subscriber base in the Americas by 54% in 2002, the largest percentage gain of any wireless technology in the region. In Latin America, GSM increased its subscriber base by 90% in 2002, largely in the second half of the year when several new GSM networks were commercially launched.

All four of the 3G licence holders in Sweden has applied for a 2 or 3 year delay to the full rollout of 3G in Sweden. This is based on problems getting approval for the siting of telecom masts and the scarcity of the handsets.

The number of NTT DoCoMo 3G FOMA subscribers increased to 320,000 subscribers up to March 2003. This means that DoCoMo hit the targets they had previously stated.

The multimedia composer and transaction engine made available by Liquid Air Lab, combined with the mBill billing platform, enabled mBill to integrate an existing SMS chat application with a multimedia messaging component.

n top of all the other challenges facing MMS before it can become the success that the mobile operators are hoping for and boost non-voice revenues to new heights - one issue stands out that is crucial for the content providers before they even think about publishing and selling content via MMS - Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Response to Californian Congressman Darrell Issa’s letter to the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence from Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association and Member of its Board.

LG will launch a rotational camera-fitted GPRS phone on the Italian market, the largest in Europe. The camera phone model is fitted with 65,000 -color TFD-LCD and 40 poly and intended for export to Europe.

All European telcos can learn valuable lessons from i-mode and Vodafone live!, according to a new brief by Forrester Research. Europe's i-mode gets the services right and the marketing wrong, while Vodafone live! does the opposite.

The PA-Manager allows operators to enforce the priority access policy at cell level without compromising Quality-of-User Experience (QoE) for all other services sharing the same media space, and also to monitor application performance on a cell-by-cell basis.

To their disappointment, some operators now find it nearly impossible to recover their investments and most have delayed their plans to deploy 3G, according to a new study by research firm Allied Business Intelligence (ABI).

DTAC announced cooperation with world’s leader in mobile communications Nokia to strengthen its position as the leading wireless data services provider.