Nokia, Elisa make world's first WCDMA900 data call

Nokia and Finnish telecom operator Elisa have carried out the world’s first WCDMA/HSDPA data call on the 900 MHz band in a commercial network. The call was conducted in Elisa’s live network in Finland, and the equipment included the Nokia Flexi WCDMA Base Station with a special solution for sharing the site infrastructure of the existing GSM base station.

The 900 MHz band can provide 2-4 times larger coverage area than the most commonly used 2 GHz band, thus reducing network deployment costs significantly especially in the rural areas. It also improves the availability of 3G services indoors due to better radio signal propagation characteristics.

“Nokia has a robust position in providing new WCDMA frequency variants to operators. Nokia Flexi Multiradio Combiner is a unique solution for GSM-WCDMA antenna line sharing within the same frequency band,” says Ari Lehtoranta, Senior Vice President, Radio Networks, Nokia.

Nokia supported Elisa in launching the first HSDPA network in the Nordic countries in April 2006.

Elisa Corporation is a leading Finnish telecoms company offering private and corporate customers a comprehensive range of services, including voice and data services, connections to the Internet and content services, customised communications and ICT solutions and network operator services. Elisa provides international services in association with its partners, Vodafone and Telenor.

Elisa Corporation is listed on the Helsinki Exchanges, and its revenue in 2005 amounted to 1.34 billion euros. Elisa has over 1.3 million fixed network subscribers, of which 479,000 are broadband subscriptions. As a broadband provider, Elisa is the market leader in Finland. The company’s mobile network holds over 2,1 million subscriptions.