Also Cellnet and Vodafone are already looking ahead three years or so to the introduction of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephony System), or third-generation (3G) mobile services, which will force down the price of today's GSM technology.
Vodafone is often touted as the UKs' leading mobile operator in terms of subscriber numbers. According to Simon Buckingham, an industry analyst at Mobile Lifestreams, subscriber information becomes increasingly critical as the mobile phone market...
Instead, they'll wait for their UMTS [3G] deployments, when they have to roll-out thousands of new base stations anyway. In its favour, Cell ID is inherent in the way mobile networks work and has a ready-made subscriber base.
They are based on a CDMA2000, which is the other serious 3G alternative to the W-CDMA, or UMTS, networks that NTT DoCoMo has rolled out in Japan and dozens of operators in Europe are committed to. Wireless chipset and intellectual property company...
The International No Limit tariff aimed at its 3G subscriber base offers calls to 23 countries for five cents per hour. UMA is seem by many as the cornerstone of fixed mobile convergence (FMC) and allows operators to offer live roaming between GSM...
Most of western Europe is on the W-CDMA flavour of 3G that is used in the UK - also referred to as UMTS - so roaming should present few problems. The GSM operator in question, Rogers Wireless, is also trialling HSDPA.