BERLIN—The mobile division of Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, has forcefully indicated that it plans to be the first to launch third-generation (3G) services in Germany. The company announced plans to deploy high-speed mobile data services in 20 German cities by the end of this year, in advance of its rivals, and is investing nearly e150 million (US$130.8 million) to prepare more than 7,000 transmission sites.
While Siemens claimed to have won the contract to supply infrastructure and handsets to T-Mobile operations worldwide, analysts said they expect the company to place similar contracts with Nokia and Nortel Networks sometime in the second quarter. The deal that T-Mobile signed with Siemens, which will include NEC handsets, runs for 10 years and will call on Siemens to help T-Mobile operations in the United Kingdom, Austria and the United States migrate to 3G services.
D2 Vodafone and Mobilcom announced some months ago they plan to introduce commercial 3G services in Germany during the second half of this year. Since then, Mobilcom has admitted that it may postpone its launch because of a lack of suitable handsets. The commercial service that T-Mobile will launch this year will be little more than a trial network with a small number of selected users having free access to a limited set of services.
