FRANCE
Nortel Networks Ltd. has won a $200 million, 15-year GSM-Railway contract with French railway operator SNCF. The new system will handle all voice and data communications for train operations within 15,000 kilometers of track and replace the existing analog radio system. The project will be under way by mid-2004 on the new Eastern France High Speed Line, and service to railway operators is expected to be delivered on the first commercial lines by end-2005. GSM-R technology is a radio communications system that uses standard GSM technology customized for railway operations. GPRS is a major part of the technology for data transport, Nortel said.
ROMANIA
U.S. supplier Telespree Communications said it received a contract with Romanian CDMA 450 MHz operator Zapp to deploy Telespree’s automated activation and acquisition solution. Zapp will deploy the technology for first-time activation of new wireless devices, as well as automated ESN swaps and telephone number changes. The companies completed technical trials in May. The value of the contract was not disclosed.
SINGAPORE
MobileOne said it would terminate its six-year-old paging service at the end of the year. Singapore’s M1 will offer its 22,000 paging customers the option to switch to its GSM network with “attractive” handset prices and subscription plans. Customers who switch can retain their pager numbers as their mobile numbers. M1 said Singapore’s pager subscriptions have plummeted from a total of1.12 million in April 1997 to 242,700 in April this year, a nearly 80-percent drop.
ANGOLA
Nortel Networks Ltd. said Angola Telecom has selected Nortel to provide a CDMA2000 1x network for voice and packet data. The equipment will be used by Movicel, Angola Telecom’s cellular operator subsidiary. Nortel has already begun to supply the network across the capital city of Luanda. Movicel, a CDMA operator, is the country’s largest operator and competes with GSM operator Unitel SARL.
