World Briefs

France Telecom said it has granted Qualcomm Inc. a worldwide license to its Turbo Code patents for both CDMA2000 and W-CDMA chipsets. The Turbo Code, which enjoy the supports of both the Third Generation Partnership Project and 3GPP2, allows higher network capacity for CDMA systems, according to the companies, adding it is “a revolutionary form of forward error correction, one of the fundamental building blocks of any type of digital communication.”

Swisscom Mobile has chosen End2End’s managed service solutions to power Vodafone Live! content downloads. Swisscom began offering Vodafone Live! Content last month. End2End’s solutions are now being used to power content downloads in more than 20 countries.

Sweden

Nordic-based wireless operator TeliaSonera said it will offer its current 3.6 million GSM customers free upgrades to the carrier’s planned third-generation network that is scheduled to begin a trial period on Dec. 1 and should be launched commercially in March. The upgrades include the exchange of current GSM SIM cards to new cards that can be used on both the current GSM and 3G network. TeliaSonera added that to take advantage of the 3G network’s higher data speeds, customers would need to purchase a 3G-enabled handset. TeliaSonera also announced that its Finnish UMTS network will start pre-commercial operations in early December with select business customers and a few hundred users. The carrier added that a commercial launch will follow soon after the trial and that it expects to offer handsets that will support either GPRS/EDGE technology, which it plans to offer in its future UMTS areas, or GPRS/UMTS technology.

Thailand

MessageVine said Thai mobile operator Hutchison CAT Wireless MultiMedia will use its technology to deploy instant messaging and presence services on its CDMA2000 1x network via . Hutchison’s HutchPlay service using the BREW platform.

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