Finland joins the growing global community of governments and carriers who are harmonizing their broadband wireless spectrum allocations with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the European Union, and the 3GPP international standard organizations.

Highlighting the benefits of global standards and common spectrum usage in advancing wireless services, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communication allocated the 2010 - 2025 MHz band for UMTS TDD wireless broadband. While the ITU designates the 2010 - 2025 MHz band for UMTS TDD use, the 3GPP defines the UMTS TDD standard, which falls under the umbrella of the GSM body of standards but has characteristics specifically optimized for packet data.

Most recently, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communication awarded a nationwide license to operate a wireless broadband network in 2020 - 2025 MHz band to SkyWeb. The SkyWeb team, who has been offering GPRS wireless data service since 2003, will deploy a UMTS TDD system to offer mobile wireless broadband to businesses and consumers. "We compared speed, mobility, activation, security and maturity of available technologies, and found UMTS TDD to be the best option for mobile broadband," said Juuso Huttunen, CTO for SkyWeb.

SkyWeb will sell broadband wireless services in Finland using a simple integrated UMTS TDD/WiFi PCMCIA data card, delivering a true broadband connection that is completely mobile. SkyWeb also plans to offer wireless telephone handsets for voice services over the wireless network using VoIP.

From its history as a next-generation wireless technology pioneer and as the first country to adopt the GSM standard, Finland is one of the most closely watched markets to determine which telecommunications advances will succeed. The Finland decision follows recent news in Japan, another advanced wireless market, that IPMobile, a Japanese broadband wireless services company, has submitted its application to deploy a UMTS TDD system in the same 2010 MHz spectrum which was recently allocated by the Japanese regulator exclusively for UMTS TDD use. IPMobile announced plans to commence wireless broadband services in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka by October 2006, with nationwide service planned by 2010.

Historically, both Finland and Japan have been leaders in their selection of next-generation wireless technology. "Like the governments of Finland and Japan, regulators and operators worldwide are ignoring hype and choosing the right technology," said Liz Kerton, executive director, Global UMTS TDD Alliance. "Unlike other broadband wireless technologies, UMTS TDD is a global, interoperable, mobile, carrier-class technology, which is available today -- covering over 22 million people in 20 countries."

International standardization and compliance with global spectrum requirements has made UMTS TDD the logical choice for every national regulator considering broadband wireless access services. The dozens of countries who support the UMTS TDD standard will benefit from widespread wireless broadband, unbeaten performance, international roaming, cross-border compatibility, and scale economies -- much as they have with GSM. The result is that the UMTS TDD standard has been adopted to build broadband wireless networks faster than any other alternative technology worldwide.