SmarTone Commissions Ericsson to Supply its WCDMA

Ericsson (Stockholm, Sweden) is supplying a WCDMA system to Hong Kong-based SmarTone Mobile Communications Ltd. The WCDMA system will support wireless IP and other packet-based wireless datacom and various multimedia services at 470 kbps and faster with wide area coverage, as well as local area services at 2 Mbps.

In addition to the 3G experimental system, Ericsson and SmarTone recently announced a contract for the first General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) system in China. Ericsson's packet-based GPRS system is a key precursor to 3G speeds. It will directly integrate SmarTone's dual band mobile network with the datacoms/Internet world, making it possible for the operator to offer packet-switched IP services, wireless access to Internet and Intranet, and other multimedia services at speeds up to 115 kbps.