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June 21, 2010
PRAGUE -- T-Mobile is continuing to invest heavily in technologies this year. The company's GSM network upgrade, which took 18 months, was completed last week. The operator is currently focusing on the rapid expansion of 3G services, which will be available in Brno and Plzen by the end of June. Network coverage will also be significantly expanded in Prague. By the end of the summer, most regional towns will be covered as well.
"Last week we finished the overall upgrade of our GSM network. All our customers everywhere in the Czech Republic will feel the change. They will get a higher-quality connection, better coverage in problematic areas and much higher transmission speeds thanks to the EDGE technology used within the entire T-Mobile network," says Frank Meywerk, T-Mobile technology director.
Mr. Meywerk's statement is confirmed by an independent assessment carried out by 3P Consulting, a company which regularly assesses the quality of all GSM networks in the Czech Republic. 3P Consulting assessed T-Mobile as the best provider of voice and data services in the second half of last year, i.e. when only half of the GSM network upgrade had been completed. A total of 4,514 base stations and 112 controllers were replaced during the upgrade. The new transmitters are approximately 45 percent more energy efficient.
The availability of 3G in Prague will significantly increase in the next two weeks and the UMTS network will be rolled out in Brno and Plzen. This summer 3G services will be extended to Ceské Budejovice, Olomouc, Pardubice, Ústí nad Labem, Hradec Králové, Liberec, Ostrava and Karlovy Vary. The next thirty major towns in the Czech Republic and their close surroundings will follow by the end of this year. T-Mobile reckons that 3G network coverage will be made available to the residents of 500 towns and cities in 2011-2012.
In addition, T-Mobile is currently testing the HSPA+ technology included in the UMTS 3GPP Release 7 specification, which offers maximum theoretical transmission speeds of up to 21 Mbps. This technology represents a further significant increase of transmission speed as well as a further increase of response time during the loading of web pages. The first commercially available end-user devices supporting the HSPA+ technology are now on the market. If internal tests prove the expected increase of the real transmission speed, T-Mobile can present this technology to its customers within a few months.
T-Mobile Czech Republic a.s.
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