1. Introduction Two agenda items are of particular interest to the UMTS Forum at the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) World Radiocommunication Conference 2007 (WRC-07); the interests are, based on the market developments and traffic increase for IMT-2000 (Agenda Item 1.4), and in relation to the care for the development of IMT-2000 in the band 2500 – 2690 MHz (Agenda Item 1.9). The UMTS Forum confirms (Press Release of 29 December 2006: “Happy New Year for global 3G mobile industry as UMTS/WCDMA subscriptions hit 100 million”’) gaining its first 100 million UMTS/WCDMA customers. According to data supplied by mobile market information provider Wireless Intelligence, the 100 million subscriber milestone for UMTS/WCDMA was passed early 2007. Today, UMTS/WCDMA subscribers have passed 115 million milestone and with a further contribution of over 65 million CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO customers, the global 3G cellular subscriber total for all technologies now stands at more than 180 million. Of this total, WCDMA subscriptions now account for two thirds of all 3G cellular connections. Confirming the market developments and the significant uptake of IMT-2000 services, a survey made by GSA (the Global mobile Suppliers Association) in May/June 2007 indicates that there where at this date: 162 commercial UMTS operators in 70 countries, out of these are 117 commercial HSDPA networks in 58 countries and 24 HSDPA networks support the higher bitrate of 3.6 Mbps; More than 900 WCDMA devices; 291 HSDPA devices from 36 suppliers have been launched in the market, including: 49 notebooks; 31 PC cards (PCMCIA cards and embedded modules); 20 USB modems; 29 Wireless Routers, and 3 Personal Media Players Following the success of the deployment of IMT-2000/UMTS networks, all current operators are expected to eventually evolve to HSDPA/HSUPA and be providing the new harmonized baseline communication system for mobile wireless broadband in the global perspective. Future estimations of the evolution of IMT-2000/UMTS and IMT-Advanced look equally promising as indicated in UMTS Forum Reports, this is also presented further in this paper together with Forum’s views in relation to the ITU-R WRC-07 agenda items 1.4 and 1.9.

 

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