ASIA Singapore : Telecom New Zealand and Lucent Technologies announced that Lucent will upgrade Telecom's existing CDMA2000 1xEV-DO mobile network with CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A (Rev. A) technology, which will enable Telecom to support faster, lower latency connections and a range of new services such as enhanced push-to-talk, multi-player gaming, laptop-based video conferencing, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). As part of the first phase of the rollout, worth US $10 million, Telecom plans to make Rev. A technology available in some areas by Christmas; additional market deployments will follow in 2007.

Telecom New Zealand is Lucent's first publicly announced Rev. A customer in the Asia-Pacific region. CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A is an enhanced version of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO that increases the efficiency, data speeds and capacity of existing EV-DO networks, with maximum download (forward link) speeds of up to 3.1 Megabits per second (Mbps), and upload (reverse link) speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps. These increased forward and reverse link data speeds reduce data latency and will enable operators such as Telecom New Zealand to support more advanced, real-time services.

"This is another demonstration of how our relationship with the world leader in wireless delivers value for our customers," said Kevin Bowler, General Manager of Telecom Mobile. "The performance of Rev. A will open up a whole new world of services, and our customers will be amongst the first anywhere to benefit from them."

Lucent built and manages Telecom New Zealand's CDMA2000 1X network and upgraded it to support CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology in 2004. As part of the CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. A project, Lucent Worldwide Services will provide deployment, RF optimization and managed services for the network upgrade.

Lucent New Zealand general manager Jonathan van Smit said Lucent was delighted to be working with Telecom New Zealand on this new project. "New Zealand is a terrific testbed for new technologies and we believe Rev. A will open the door to a whole range of exciting new benefits for Telecom customers," said Mr van Smit. "It also demonstrates the clear evolution path for CDMA technology and significant investment protection afforded by Lucent's solution, which enables Telecom to introduce EV-DO Revision A with simple base station channel card and software enhancements."

This Weeks 3G News By Photos
This Weeks 3G News