The UMTS Forum, the trade body promoting the global uptake of UMTS third generation mobile services, today stressed the benefits of W-CDMA 3G technology for the Asian market. The UMTS Forum also summarised the key UMTS 3G milestones to date and outlined the significant opportunities which lie ahead.

Mobile industry body The UMTS Forum has held a workshop in Prague this week to provide an overview of the deployment status of UMTS Third Generation (3G) mobile systems in Europe and worldwide. Coinciding with the UMTS Forum's 30th General Assembly held in Prague, the workshop - titled "UMTS in the Extended European Union and Neighbouring Countries" - was addressed on Monday by Czech operator Eurotel's Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Terrence Valeski.

Industry body The UMTS Forum has launched a new White Paper that charts the evolutionary options to 3G that are available to mobile operators worldwide.

Chinese operators can participate in global opportunity by selecting W-CDMA

"GSM evolution will allow Brazil to harmonise with the global mobile market" says UMTS Forum

UMTS Forum spectrum experts will be actively involved at the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-03), which starts today. The conference which runs until the 4 July 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland, is a key event on the telecoms calendar - exploring, among other topics, the issue of the timely availability of spectrum for future UMTS/IMT-2000 requirements.

The UMTS Forum welcomes the announcement from Sweden this week of the launch of UMTS services by "greenfield" operator Hutchison under the brand name "3". Bringing the number of European territories where UMTS is commercially available to five, 3's Swedish announcement demonstrates growing momentum for UMTS deployments. Several further launch announcements are anticipated from European operators this year and during 2004, supported by a growing choice of WCDMA terminal designs.

The UMTS Forum has issued a new report that addresses the technical and service issues facing mobile operators as they consider the business implications of upgrading their Third Generation networks to support IMS: the 'IP Multimedia Subsystem' that promises the integration of real-time and non-real-time IP-based multimedia communications.

The third in the series of 'm-Commerce Discovery Events', organized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to help companies apply mobile technology to their businesses, will be held at ETSI headquarters in Sophia Antipolis in the South of France on 9 and 10 April as a joint event with The UMTS Forum. This series of seminars is being organized by ETSI Project M-Commerce (EP M-Comm) in various venues around Europe and will cover both financial and telecommunications aspects.

New UMTS Forum research explores our relationship with the mobile phone and makes recommendations to industry for effective marketing of new UMTS services and products