Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp is setting up a second company to develop UMTS or third generation mobile telephone equipment – this time in Singapore. UMTS is the standard that will replace current digital cellular equipment in the next ten years, and provides mobile telephones with high-speed data capabilities. The company will be called NEC Mobile Communications Development and will design and develop software and semiconductor hardware for Wideband-CDMA, the technology already accepted as the basis for the air interface for both the Asian and European UMTS standard, mainly due to early development work by Japanese mobile operator NTT Docomo. NEC is predicting that it will receive around $3.7bn in revenues for third generation equipment by 2005, and in an effort to target the European market directly in April NEC partnered Britain’s ERA Technology Ltd. The two set up a joint venture Telecom MODUS Ltd based in Surrey, England to develop third generation equipment.
