UTStarcom (UTSI) has received a letter of certification from China's Ministry of Information (MII) giving the company a strong rating for its performance in the 3G WCDMA trials recently completed in China.
In its letter of acknowledgement, the 3G MTNet Trial Technical Group stated that UTStarcom's WCDMA system successfully passed all phases of the 3G testing, fared well in network functionalities, achieved roaming and interconnection with other systems as well as terminals and offers complete sets of functions and features.
"The MII's high rating of UTStarcom's performance in the 3G field trials with China Netcom in Beijing is a strong endorsement of the company's WCDMA technology in the highly competitive race for 3G vendor licensing in China," said Hong Lu, chief executive officer of UTStarcom, Inc. "UTStarcom has been a leader in 3G research in China since 1997 and currently has more than 35 million subscribers for its PAS wireless service in China. As UTStarcom's 3G WCDMA technology runs over the same IP-based softswitch platform as the company's PAS service, operators in China who offer PAS service can leverage their existing infrastructure to offer 3G services once licenses are awarded."
In December 2003, UTStarcom was selected to participate in official field trials of its 3G WCDMA solution in Beijing with China Netcom. The selection was based on UTStarcom's performance in the phase one and phase two of MII's MTNet lab testing from June 2001 to August 2003, which consisted of indoor technical tests of 3GPP compliance, interface interoperability among different vendors, and various functions and features.
The outdoor field trials, conducted by the MII's Research Institute of Telecommunications Transmission (RITT) and 3G Technical Trial Expert Group (3GTEG), were officially announced in November 2003, and testing began in February 2004. The trial required each participating vendor to provide a 3GPP-compliant commercial system, including a Radio Access Network with wide geographic coverage, and a core network with a full complement of commercial network features.
