Rogers Wireless launches HSDPA in Canada

November 2, 2006

3G Americas applauds Rogers Wireless on their technology leadership role in offering mobile broadband service based on UMTS/HSDPA -- the natural evolution for GSM. Today, Rogers announced that their HSDPA service is commercially available in nine major markets, with plans to expand to the top Canadian markets during 2007. Rogers is the first operator in Canada to offer HSDPA service and the second in all the Americas.

"It's exciting to watch the spread of mobile broadband connectivity across North America with commercial services now offered by both Rogers and Cingular," remarked Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas. "The news of Rogers' HSDPA deployment will be welcomed throughout the Americas, in addition to the recent announcement by T-Mobile USA to deploy UMTS with HSDPA capability in 2007."

To date, there are 72 commercial HSDPA networks, with another 55 planned or in deployment. UMTS services are already offered by 142 operators in 61 countries, with an additional 149 networks in deployment, planned, licensed or in trial.

UMTS/HSDPA technology benefits from the scope and scale of more than two billion GSM customers worldwide, and especially from the global ecosystem of suppliers manufacturing to these open standards. HSDPA delivers high speed mobile broadband connectivity with:

-- Throughput rates averaging 550-800 Kbps

-- Reduced latency to 70-100 milliseconds

-- Simultaneous voice and data service using the same spectrum allocation

-- Improved multi-media services for rapid downloads of video clips, music tracks, large high-resolution files and games

"Operators in Latin America, such as Ola in Colombia, are trialing UMTS while considering the unique market dynamics of their regions that will influence their decisions to commercially launch services," commented Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas, "Ancel in Uruguay has announced their 2007 plans to commercially deploy UMTS and later in the same year upgrade their network to HSDPA."

Analysts predict that globally, there will be 100 million UMTS/HSDPA customers by the end of 2006. It is expected that almost all of the 291 operators committed to deploying UMTS will eventually enhance their offered services with HSDPA.