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In a premiere for Berlin's UMTS network, T-Mobile Deutschland is using the setting of Deutsche Telekom's Internationales Presse Kolloquium (IPK) to demonstrate the performance of its third generation mobile phone network. Two specially-equipped vehicles are to be employed in a live demonstration of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) applications, including, for the first time in Germany, a live handover between UMTS radio cells.

"The ability to access multimedia services over the new UMTS network is a powerful demonstration that, for T-Mobile, the future of mobile communications is no longer just a vision", explained Timotheus Httges, Managing Director of T-Mobile Deutschland. "When the new network is launched, we will be able to offer our customers a large number of high-quality, next generation services."

The vehicle occupants receive information, for example about the route and interesting sights along the way, via laptops in the back of the two vans. Direct access to T-Mobile's t-zones data portal is also possible. And for the first time in Germany a handover of data links from one UMTS radio cell to another will be demonstrated live.

By the end of 2002, two hundred and fifty transmitters (node B) for the UMTS network had been installed in Berlin and Potsdam. Across the whole of Germany, technical preparations for over 3,000 sites are now complete. The third generation mobile phone technology should be in place in around 200 towns and cities by the third quarter of 2003. This clearly exceeds the minimum coverage of 25 percent of the German population as required by the Regulation Authority for Telecommunications and Post. To date, T-Mobile Deutschland has invested over 140 million euros in preparing UMTS sites and the necessary systems technology.