TIM starts EDGE-3G services

May 25, 2004

"TIM Turbo" commenced yesterday, the new line of 3G services that marks the commercial start-up of the combined Edge - UMTS network for TIM customers. The announcement was made by the top management of the company during the recently concluded Rhodes Convention in which about 2000 dealers of TIM's distribution chain participated.

The coverage of the new TIM Edge network is spreading at great speed like a wave over the national territory: every week more and more cities and rural areas are being reached and he entire country will be covered by the end of the year.

The network roll out and the launch of the Edge services are proof of TIM as an innovative and technological leader, placing the company, once again, at the forefront of the business in Italy and Europe.

In addition, also for the UMTS component, by the end of June coverage will have actually exceeded the compulsory requirements specified in the national procurement tender. TIM is, in fact progressively rolling out its UMTS network to cover the whole territory and the deployment of the network will be completed within the coming years.

The new range of "TIM Turbo" mobile phones, which will be soon available at TIM sales points, enables customers to use the mobile network for third-generation multimedia services such as high-speed connection to the Internet, the reception and transmission of digital images, videos, photos and music files at a transmission speeds in the order of hundreds of kilobit per second (with respect to the present speed of 40kbit/s of the GPRS).

All the services at present available on the GPRS network will transit on the new Edge-UMTS network including, for example, "Mobile TV", the TV on the mobile phone, which TIM successfully launched last year, and which will acquire an even more TV like quality thanks to Edge broadband.

All this is possible with the new EDGE "TIM Turbo", mobile phones which are already on sale: initially NOKIA 6230 and soon NOKIA 3200. The first UMTS mobiles to be made available by TIM will be Sony Ericsson Z 1010 and the Samsung Z 105 U.

"TIM offers Edge and UMTS services in full compliance with the schedule announced during Telecom Day, the meeting with the financial community, and confirms its own roadmap for the complete development of third generation services" - commented Marco De Benedetti, Chief Executive Officer of TIM. "The Value-added services (VAS) generated euro 300 million revenue for TIM in the domestic market alone in the first quarter of the current year, with a year-on-year increase of 64% as concerns the more innovate VAS, which now account for 19% of all VAS revenue.