3GSM: News from the show

Both Lucent Technologies and Ericsson today said they have won expanded contracts with Cingular Wireless for the buildout of its UMTS/high-speed downlink packet access network. The companies offered no financial details about the deal or information about what new elements they would be supplying. Cingular selected both vendors to be access and core equipment suppliers for the 3G access network 18 months ago. Ericsson is providing packet core elements as well as radio infrastructure, while Lucent is providing voice switches and access infrastructure as well as its IP Multimedia Subsystem control plane architecture for the network. Earlier this week Nortel networks announced it had been handed a major piece of Cingular’s 3G switching network after failing to win the initial round of bidding for the access network.

The GSM Association said today it has broken new records in attendance for the 3G World Congress after moving the convention from Cannes, France, to Barcelona, Spain, this year. Final attendance figures came in at 50,000 delegates, exhibitors, staff and other participants over the last four days at the Fira de Barcelona convention center. The first day alone saw 34,900 visitors to event, compared to 24,300 at the first day of the Congress in 2005.

Ericsson said this week that it has been selected to be sole supplier for Rogers Communications UMTS/HSDPA build out in Canada. Rogers is Canada’s largest wireless carrier, and has used Ericsson as its primary supplier for its wireless infrastructure, while many other Canadian carriers have used homegrown vendor Nortel Networks.

Alcatel is building a mobile TV platform for T-Mobile in Europe, using the carrier’s existing EDGE and UMTS infrastructure in the U.K., Germany and Austria. Alcatel will supply client media players, an electronic programming guide video servers for the new T-Mobile service.