Advocate Faster Adoption of 3G in Europe

Europe : Milan - The 3G enterprise Alliance, a broad-based industry group today announced the launch of a campaign in Italy to highlight the business benefits that third-generation (3G) Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks offer to businesses. At 3gea seminars held at the U.S. Consulate in Milan and the Istituto Superiore Mario Boella in Torino, local business leaders gathered to learn about the competitive advantages high-speed mobile data access can deliver for their businesses, and to encourage mobile operators to more quickly adopt 3G UMTS in order to support the mobile data needs of enterprise customers.

The 3gea, whose founding members include the London Business School, Lucent Technologies, Sun Microsystems, Atos KPMG Consulting (AKC), Boston University, BP, Hewlett Packard (HP), INSEAD and Morgan Stanley, hosted the meetings to demonstrate the concrete benefits of integrating 3G services into the enterprise and corporate markets for Italian businesses. Enterprise representatives to the forum also demonstrated their commitment to, and demand for high-speed data applications, and expressed support for the rapid introduction of 3G for business use.

Alessandro di Napoli, EAS ITALIA srl, a security systems manufacturer said: "3G will offer a competitive advantage with a higher data capacity rate and faster speeds from 384 kbps - 2mbps, greater speeds than either GPRS or GSM can offer. Thanks to higher speed, lots of new services could be offered with great advantage of our business. We would like to have access to this type of technology as soon as possible."

The seminars included presentations and discussions on the key benefits of mobile high-speed data access including increased workforce productivity, reduced operational expenditure and more effective management of the mobile workforce. The seminar also explored the pent-up demand for such services in the business community.

"There is a tremendous demand in the enterprise market for mobile high-speed data services. A majority of mobile professionals have laptops or PDAs and they want to be able to access the same capabilities on the move that they have in the office, " said Pat Brans, Manager of Strategic Alliances for iAnywhere Solutions, a leading provider of mobile database, middleware and m-Business solutions that has recently joined the 3gea. "Empowering a mobile workforce with mobile, high-speed, secure data will lead to benefits such as increased productivity, improved inventory management and ultimately increased customer satisfaction for businesses and their customers."

This event is a follow-up to a similar successful seminar held last month at the IESE business school in Madrid, Spain. The seminar in Spain featured a live demonstration of high speed data connectivity, conducted by Lucent Technologies, showing how business customers can access company applications, retrieve software updates from the Intranet and Internet and use super-fast data services while on the move using 3G UMTS technology. Using a laptop computer equipped with the Merlin U530(tm) UMTS wireless PC modem card -- jointly developed by Lucent and Novatel Wireless, Lucent illustrated how 3G UMTS enables access to a range of business applications, over a live UMTS interface. Consistent speeds of 340kbps were achieved while a user accessed a variety of Internet and corporate applications and communicated online with colleagues overseas.

The 3gea campaign will continue through 2003 with similar forums planned for other major European business centres, and an event marking the anniversary of the launch of the 3gea, scheduled towards the end of the year. This will showcase 3gea market research and findings for 2002/2003.