Europe Poland : The High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology represents a development on the currently used UMTS, with which data transmission speed can be now increased from 384kbit/s to 1.8Mbit/s, in other words, one comparable to the speeds achieved with fixed line DSL, and ultimately up to 14.4 Mbit/s. As a result, the Era Network clients using the blueconnect service now gain even faster wireless internet access, at no extra cost.

PTC presented its application of the HSDPA technology for the first time in March of this year, at the Lodz Intertelecom trade fair. Six months later, PTC provides its clients with a fully functional HSDPA network; available within the limits of Era’s current UMTS network.

Coverage of PTC’s 3G HSDPA network includes 55 localities, including Warsaw, the Silesian region and the Gdansk agglomeration. Further plans include commercial launches of the same network in Szczecin, Torun, Bydgoszcz and Lublin. By the end of this year, over 8 million inhabitants of this country will find themselves within the range of the 3G network, which also means that PTC is going to fulfil its license obligation: its 3G network will have covered over 20 percent of Poland’s population.

Within the blueconnect service, PTC customers also gain access to Poland’s largest HotSpot network of over 340 points. These are located primarily in business centres, hotels, airports, shopping centres as well as KFC, PizzaHut and McDonald’s restaurants.

PTC is the first mobile operator in Poland and one of the first in global terms to include in its offer - within the blueconnect service - the ExpressCard Merlin XU870 card, which supports the HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE and GPRS technologies and is able to work together with the newest types of notebook computers and the Macintosh Macbooks.

In addition, PTC is introducing the new Huawei E620 card, the first to serve all of the mobile data transmission technologies at only 1 zloty (Euro 0.25). The offer will also include the Option Icon, Option Fusion+ and the Option GT MAX models. They all enable full use of the new technology, and the data transmission speeds that technology offers.

The blueconnect service users already using the data cards in a version that supports the HSDPA technology, the so called HSDPA Ready cards (which PTC introduced in connection with the planned technological changes in November 2005) can adjust them to transmission in the HSDPA technology, this with the use of software available free of charge at www.blueconnect.pl. The earlier blueconnect card models, such as Merlin U 530 and U 630 will be gradually replaced.

The blueconnect product offer was also enriched with a ‘blueconnect compressor’, new special software. At installation of that software application on the computer, the blueconnect service user will be able to view websites, send and receive e mail messages and download data from the Internet at even higher speeds. Irrespective of the transmission technology (HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS), the blueconnect compressor can increase connection speeds by several times. The blueconnect compressor software works with each blueconnect set, irrespective of the card or the modem model. The software is available as a free download from www.blueconnect.pl .

The high speed wireless internet access blueconnect service was introduced to the market in April of last year. It utilises such technologies as HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS and W-LAN. It is expected that by the end of this year some 100 000 clients will be users of the HSDPA/UMTS technology as part of the blueconnect service.

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