- Study for the UMTS Forum by Booz Allen Hamilton investigates economic impact of harmonised and liberalised spectrum usage on EU Member States
- Maintaining a harmonised approach to mobile phone frequencies will result in an increase of EUR244 billion in consumer purchasing power by 2020

3G/UMTS subscribers predicted to reach 100M by the end of 2006

An invited audience of operators, equipment vendors and government officials heard today at a seminar organized jointly by The TD-SCDMA Forum and The UMTS Forum that complementary deployment of W-CDMA and TD-SCDMA technologies can provide cost-effective, wide area coverage for Chinese mobile operators to deploy high capacity, low cost voice and data services across the region.

Addressing delegates at this week's Futurecom event, UMTS Forum Jean-Pierre Bienaim urged Brazil's operators to actively embrace the opportunities offered by 3G/UMTS.

In his inaugural speech at this weeks ITU/BDT Regional Seminar on Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) for rural and remote areas for Africa, His Excellency Mr Bello Bouba Magari, Minister of State, Minister of Post and Telecommunications of Cameroon stated: "There is a need to look urgently for innovative solutions to reduce the digital divide between urban and rural populations, as well as remote areas." Furthermore, he added, "A recent study commissioned by the government of Cameroon has revealed that our country has still delays in the realisation of the true information society, with coverage of less than 30% of the territory and high access costs to the Internet."

An invited audience of representatives of 100 telecom operators, manufacturers and administrators heard yesterday how the Ukraine stands to benefit from the launch of 3G/UMTS mobile broadband services.

The UMTS Forum has welcomed results from this year's ITU-R Regional Radiocommunications Conference (RRC-06) that pave the way for the introduction of 3G/UMTS mobile services in frequencies that will potentially be freed up by the "analogue switch-off" of terrestrial television broadcasting.

As worldwide subscriptions to 3G networks exceed 100 million, industry association The UMTS Forum has confirmed that WCDMA is the world's most popular 3G technology by a factor that is fast approaching three to one.

An industry workshop held this week in Moscow has assessed the expected technological, regulatory and socio-economic impacts of 3G mobile networks on Russia's telecoms industry and end-users.

Ensuring access to information for all - bridging the digital divide