UMTS900 to Be Deployed This Year

Informa says that it believes that Finland, France and Portugal will lead the way in rolling out UMTS900, as predicted in a recent Informa report. From the beginning of this year, Europe's CEPT cleared the path for the roll-out of UMTS900 in its 47 member states. It has adopted a decision to allow deployment of UMTS in the spectrum bands formerly reserved for GSM. All that now remains is for the member states to implement the decision into their national radio-frequency plans, a process that has already begun in Finland and Portugal.

In Finland Elisa has already made a data call over its commercial network in November 2006, in collaboration with Nokia and Option Wireless. It looks likely to begin sharing site infrastructure currently used to support GSM900 by mid 2007. Vodafone Portugal made its first 3G voice, video and data call in the 900MHz band in December 2006. It used equipment from Nortel Networks and Option.

Informa forecasts that users will initially be able to access UMTS900 via datacards inserted into laptops, and believes operators could begin to take delivery of datacards supporting UMTS900 within months.

Informa does not expect handsets for UMTS900 to come to market before late 2007, with volume shipments not expected until 2008."

Posted to the site on 9th February 2007