Telcel Launches HSDPA Mobile Broadband in Mexico

BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwire - February 7, 2008) - 3G Americas, a wireless trade organization representing the GSM family of technologies in the Americas, congratulates Telcel on their launch of third generation (3G) mobile broadband services in Mexico. With global UMTS/HSDPA subscriptions reaching the milestone of 200 million, two out of three 3G subscriptions worldwide are now using UMTS/HSDPA technology. This number is escalating rapidly with the growing number of operator deployments and network expansions of this leading high speed wireless broadband technology.

Telcel today announced the commercial launch of HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) initially in four cities in Mexico, with plans to expand service to nine additional cities, for a total of thirteen cities covered in this first phase of HSDPA deployment. With the launch of 3G services in Mexico by Telcel, its parent company, América Móvil, has now completed eight commercial UMTS/HSDPA 3G networks in Latin America, operated by Argentina CTI, Brazil Claro, Chile Claro, Colombia Comcel, El Salvador Claro, Uruguay CTI and Paraguay CTI.

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, a total of 17 operators have commercially launched UMTS/HSDPA in ten countries. More than 50,000 UMTS/HSDPA subscriptions in the region utilize 3G services today, and this number is expected to increase to over 5 million by the end of 2008 according to Informa Telecoms & Media. Networks offering UMTS/HSDPA are based on the GSM technology evolution, which today have an 80% market share in this region, and globally account for 87% of all wireless subscriptions.

Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas, noted: "UMTS/HSDPA networks offer many benefits to network operators and their customers. Wireless operators get increased data ARPU, enterprise users gain through increased work productivity, and consumers obtain access to personalized mobile broadband at their fingertips wherever they may be."

Globally, there are 276 operators with UMTS networks planned, in deployment, or in trial, including 208 commercially available in 87 countries. More than two-thirds of commercial UMTS networks have been upgraded to HSDPA, and the deployment of HSUPA is the next step of this evolution. To date, HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) is commercially available on 27 networks worldwide and volume deployments are expected in 2008. The combined HSDPA and HSUPA network is called HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). Almost all UMTS operators are expected to deploy HSPA.

Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas, commented, "With the growing footprint of high speed mobile broadband services worldwide, and the broad variety of devices available, we are seeing new and emerging applications for customers -- everything from social networking to the sending of video and large email files."

There are more than 400 devices in the market that will support UMTS/HSPA technology including handsets, PC cards, external modems, routers and notebook PCs with embedded HSPA chipsets. Most UMTS/HSPA devices are backwards-compatible for global roaming to GSM/GPRS and EDGE allowing customers access anytime, anywhere throughout most of the world for both voice and high speed data.

UMTS/HSDPA represents 200 million subscriptions worldwide today and according to figures from Informa Telecoms and Media's World Cellular Information Service, nearly 330 million UMTS/HSDPA subscriptions are projected by year end 2008.

About 3G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Wireless Technology

The mission of 3G Americas is to promote and facilitate the seamless deployment throughout the Americas of GSM and its evolution to LTE. The organization fully supports the wireless technology migration strategy for service providers from GSM to EDGE, HSPA and LTE as well as the applications enabled by these leading wireless technologies. 3G Americas is focused on the wireless industry in North, Central and South America and is headquartered in Bellevue, WA with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit our website at www.3gamericas.org.

3G Americas' Board of Governor members include Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Ericsson, Gemalto, HP, Motorola, Nortel Networks, Nokia, Openwave, Research in Motion (RIM), Rogers, T-Mobile USA, Telcel, Telefónica, and Texas Instruments.

Contact Information: Contact: Vicki Livingston +1 262 242 3458