Broadcom Intros MStream

BARCELONA -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced its revolutionary MStream™ technology. Broadcom® MStream is a new mobile phone technology that provides significant quality and capacity improvements for 2G and 3G cellular networks. After extensive testing, handsets equipped with Broadcom’s MStream technology demonstrated improved voice quality in weak and noisy signal conditions where call quality was typically poor. Leading handset manufacturers and cellular operators are currently evaluating MStream technology to increase voice quality, coverage and data integrity in low signal areas, as well as to increase capacity on existing cellular networks.

When the growth in number of cellular handset users outpaces the growth in network capacity, carriers typically convert their cellular service to lower bit-rate operations, which support more users per base-station but unfortunately can suffer noticeable voice quality degradation. In addition, low bit-rate class of service results in a higher number of dropped calls, which negatively affects customer satisfaction. Cellular carriers will benefit from technologies that enable increases in capacity and improved call quality, which are important requirements to avoid service cancellations or costly customer support. Broadcom’s cellular baseband processors, enabled with MStream technology can allow networks to support nearly twice as many calls as before without any changes to the current network infrastructure.

“With MStream, Broadcom introduces a breakthrough technology that sets our cellular product offerings apart from the competition and builds upon our track record of superior technical innovation,” said Dr. Henry Samueli, Chairman, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Broadcom. “This new technology is a win-win for consumers and carriers, improving the basic voice quality of mobile phone calls that are often taken for granted, while increasing cellular network capacity with no additional investment required by the carriers.”

Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM)