ESPOO, Finland—Nokia Corp. announced that its HSDPA network equipment has been launched by T-Mobile International Inc. in Hanover, Germany during the CeBIT 2006 conference. Later in the year, the service is expected to be rolled out in England and the Netherlands.
T-Mobile’s HSDPA plans are in line with the latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media, which forecasts that HSDPA networks will be up and running in all major Western European markets by the end of this year.
The report indicates that uptake would depend on carriers’ pricing strategies.
“What is clear is that mobile operators will leverage HSDPA’s one key advantage over both fixed DSL and Wi-Fi to justify pricing the service at a premium: mobility,” commented Devine Kofiloto, principal analyst at Informa. “In the voice world, the so-called ‘mobile premium’ has for years allowed mobile operators to get away with vastly higher tariffs than those charged by their fixed-line counterparts. As competition continues to exert downward pressure on process and to narrow the price differential in the voice domain between mobile and fixed, so mobile operators will look to leverage HSDPA’s mobility benefits to establish a new ‘mobile premium’ for mobile broadband over its fixed counterparts of Wi-Fi and DSL.”
In other vendor news, Nokia said it won a $190 million managed services contract from its newest customer, du, a new carrier in the United Arab Emirates. In the deal, Nokia is set to supply a third-generation core network and a large proportion of the radio network for GSM/GPRS/EDGE and W-CDMA.
The carrier plans to offer countrywide services, but didn’t offer details about when the network would be deployed.
Separately, Alcatel Inc. announced a new contract with Russian operator Sakhatelecom to deploy a next-generation network in the Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutiya.
Though terms of the agreement were not disclosed, Alcatel said the project is scheduled to begin during the second quarter and is expected to be wrapped up by the end of the year.
L.M. Ericsson signed an agreement with Turkish fixed operator Turk Telekom to provide 1,200 microwave transmission Mini-Links for high-performance broadband service. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Andrew Corp. announced a new contract to expand WildBlue Communications’ broadband satellite network of gateway Earth stations in North America.
Andrew explained that it plans to design and install two new Ka-band gateway Earth stations at sites in Minnesota and Washington, and will add capacity-boosting equipment to WildBlue’s existing Andrew-built network in the United States and Canada.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
