27 Countries Now Have HSCSD

The GSM Association has said that High Speed Data service is now available to more than 107 million customers across 27 countries around the world - in Europe, Asia Pacific, South Africa and Israel. Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association, announced today that 38 GSM networks so far have successfully implemented HSCSD. "This feature enables subscribers of GSM networks to transmit and receive data at rates of up to 4 times the rate of transmission on GSM's second generation platform," said Conway. "This feature that enables networks to test existing new applications that demand high data rates over the existing infrastructure", he added.

According to David Gordon, Manager of International Services for Partner Communications Company, Israel, and Co-chair of the HSCSD Interest Group of the GSM Association, "HSCSD is especially valuable to travelers that are seeking to connect to their corporate networks and email service without the hassle of cables and plugs, and at reasonable data rates". He added, "It is expected that the innovative HSCSD enabled product currently launched will increase the adoption rate of the technology among GSM family networks."

Due to the implementation of International Roaming agreements among the networks, High Speed data services can be offered to customers of these networks while traveling to other networks that provide the HSCSD service."

Posted to the site on 13th March 2002