Vodafone has enlisted Nokia’s help to expand its Hungarian GSM network.
The deal comes at the end of a busy week for Vodafone. The company has already announced encouraging preliminary annual results and launched an aggressive price war with major rival BT Cellnet, over GPRS mobile handsets.
Nokia and Vodafone have enjoyed a successful history of co-operation, with Nokia acting as the sole supplier of GSM in Hungary. The initial Hungarian deal was formed in July 1999. Within three months of signing the concession contract with the Hungarian government, Vodafone had introduced its commercial mobile phone service, making it the fastest commercial launching with national roaming.
As a result of this latest alliance, the Finnish firm will provide Vodafone not only with a nationwide GSM network infrastructure, but will also carry out the implementation of services. GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) is the system of choice in Europe, and is based on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). This can triple the network capacity, compared to the older analogue technology.
To fulfill the terms of the agreement Nokia will have to supply a significant amount of equipment, including cellular transmission equipment, base station controllers and its UltraSite base stations. UltraSite is an integral part of the deal, as it can support GSM, High Speed Data, GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA, readying the network for the awaited 3G revolution.
At present Vodafone is the third largest operator in Hungary, with a customer base of 223,000. This deal could prove the catalyst to propel the company further up the Hungarian rankings, preparing it for the 3G explosion, and as such represents a positive end to a positive week.
