Nokia Completes GPRS Development Milestones

GPRS technology development strengthens Nokia's leading position

Nokia today announced it has completed several significant General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) development and testing milestones. Nokia has successfully completed individual network element development for GPRS elements including the Nokia Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN), Nokia Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) the Nokia Charging Gateway (CG) and the Nokia GPRS Base Station Subsystem (BSS). System integration testing has already begun and will be completed in the first quarter 2000.

The Nokia GPRS solution is compliant from the start with the specifications agreed by SMG 29, which is a technical committee within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). In addition, the Nokia GPRS solution has full support for all ETSI specified interfaces, Gb, Gr, Gs, Gd, Gn, Gp and Gf, resulting in a competitive functionality from the outset including support for Short Message Service (SMS) over GPRS and support for all classes of GPRS-enabled mobile terminals.

"The GPRS core network infrastructure has been shipping to customers around the world since August", says Petri Pöyhönen, Head of GPRS Business Program, Nokia Networks. "The most important outcome of this achievement is that our customers are well-positioned on the way to 3rd Generation networks and the mobile information society. The core network systems already have commercially capable hardware. Rollout of commercial software upgrades will start in April next year. This means that our customers will be amongst the first operators in providing enhanced mobile data applications."

GPRS is the ideal bearer for WAP applications, and the Nokia GPRS solution supports pre-paid for WAP based applications.

"The opportunity to offer pre-paid services is a significant competitive factor in many cases. This ability combined with features such as service management and customer care and billing of the end-to-end Nokia GPRS solution, will lead to efficient services launch and take-off", says Chris Briglin, Head of Marketing, GPRS Business Program, Nokia Networks.

"Gs and Gd interfaces enable the GPRS network to communicate with the Mobile Switch as well as the Short Message Service Center, our customers will benefit from full support of these interfaces", says Chris Briglin and continues: "Class B terminals will not miss incoming voice calls. Class C terminals will be able to receive short message notifications for calls that get diverted to the voice mail because Class C terminals cannot serve them. This makes a big difference in service continuity when introducing GPRS capabilities."

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