3G, Global, Huawei Technologies:  Huawei has grasped the opportunity of Singapore’s CommunicAsia 2005 exhibition to outline its 3G roadmap.

The company’s announcements centre on its UMTS and CDMA2000 solutions, as well as its fixed wireless terminals and latest 3G wireless data cards and CDMA handsets. Huawei Asia Pacific Vice President Hong-Yun Liu believes: “3G mobile services offer a huge growth opportunity for telecom service providers and equipment manufacturers worldwide...Huawei Technologies has deployed UMTS/CDMA2000 solutions in Malaysia, Thailand, Holland, UAE, and Brunei. Huawei is expecting another year of rapid growth in 2005.”

At the core of Huawei’s 3G strategies is its latest Softswitch IP solutions, built on a Next Generation Network (NGN) platform and aimed at reducing capital and operational expenses while achieving high performance, large capacity and seamless integration for businesses. The core networks for Huawei’s UMTS, GSM, CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA solutions are already entirely based on a common Softswitch platform that can simultaneously support different wireless and fixed access networks. Moving forward, Huawei has plans to extend support on the mobile Softswitch platform to commercial IP Multimedia Subsystems.

To date Huawei has secured 11 commercial UMTS contracts worldwide and is actively helping operators to deploy UMTS solutions. The company is committed to end-to-end UMTS solutions covering Soft-Switch based core network, High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), Radio Access Network, IP Multimedia Subsystem, mobile handsets, terminals and data cards.

On a more commercial footing, Huawei will focus on reducing networking costs for CDMA2000 technologies operators. It expects that combining CDMA2000 and Huawei NGN technologies will exploit the synergy between IP transmission and NGN’s distributed architecture for cost benefits.

The 3G data cards unveiled at CommunicAsia will, Huawei hopes, allow online mobile users to access high-speed connection virtually anywhere. For example, available from this August its E612 data cards support WCDMA/GPRS/GSM dual mode, with a wireless data transfer speed of up to 384kb/s over WCDMA, allowing for high-quality voice service based on WCDMA or GSM. E612 also supports circuit switched data service based on WCDMA or GSM and group SMS transmission.

Also available from this August, Huawei’s EC321 and EC325 are wireless data cards that support CDMA2000 1x RTT and are compatible with IS-95 A/B. They also support voice and SMS, large-capacity phone books and the ROMSIM/R-UIM card. Running on Windows2000 or Windows XP OS, both cards will deliver current connection flow and accumulative total flow with a data rate of up to 153.6kb/s. EC321 fits with the PCMCIA type II part and comes with retractable antenna, allowing for incoming calls, ring prompt, and calls receiving while accessing data service online. EC325 supports standard Mini USB interface with an internal antenna.

The handset Huawei launched in Singapore is the C506 handset with a high-resolution display supporting 65K colours. Its steel-clad body offers laser-cut curves intended to permit durability and stylish looks.