Romanian CDMA Operator, Zapp Plans UMTS Rollout

During a press conference held last month, Chris Bataillard, CEO of Romania's Zapp announced that their 2100 Mhz network will be functional by June 30th, providing mobile high-speed data services based on ZTEÃ's UMTS/HSDPA solutions.

As per their license obligations, Zapp has to deploy a full 3G network by end of 2011, the first step of this process being due on June 30th 2008 and refers to covering 19 major cities in Romania: Bucuresti, Timisoara, Brasov, Constanta, Cluj, Iasi, Sibiu, Tg Mures, Braila, Arad, Galati, Pitesti, Ploiesti, Satu Mare, Baia Mare, Buzau, Bacau and Oradea.

By the end of the first stage of the UMTS network build-up, over 5.5 million people will be within the range of ZappÃ's UMTS signal. It means that the company will have fulfilled its license obligations to provide UMTS services to at least 26% of the Romanian population.

By May 20th, each of the nineteen cities will have at least one 2100 Mhz base station deployed. Out of the total number of cities to be covered in this first phase, eleven of them are in advanced completion stage and some of these cities will be fully covered (all base stations installed and functional) already by the end of next week.

The company also plans to upgrade the speed on its existing CDMA EV-DO network to 3.1Mbps, and to 7.2 Mbps once the UMTS commercial offer will be available.

Zapp decided at the beginning of this year to use UMTS/HSDPA technology for its 2100 Mhz network as opposed to CDMA2000. The CDMA450 network will continue to support both data and voice services and will undergo some significant expansion over the next period of time in terms of both capacity and coverage.

Posted to the site on 5th May 2008