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Monaco Telecom, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, is working with the Siemens-NEC Mobisphere joint venture to offer 3G services in the principality's two square kilometre territory. The Monaco trials began before Christmas but, like the Isle of Man before it, the region is only letting a handful of customers test the service using tools like video telephony and a location-based service, Monaco on Air. That application communicates with the network to discern the user's position, so a tourist travelling from the airport could get information on historic sites or facilities for business travellers.
The Monaco service operates from seven radio sites (base stations and antennae) which cover the complete area of the tiny principality. Siemens said Monaco will be the first European country to test multimedia applications in an urban environment, where tall buildings and dense population create particular challenges for service delivery.
Other applications will let Monaco customers send e-mail, listen to music and view video clips; Monaco Telecom said the service would attain speeds of "up to 384 kbits/second." The applications have been tested under realistic conditions, the company said, with a UMTS telephone handset from NEC linked to PC or PDA.
Ronan Royce, head of mobile solutions for Siemens Ireland, said regions like Isle of Man and Monaco were natural first choices for the first 3G rollouts because of their size. "Scale is important," he said. "National coverage is difficult unless the area is quite small."
The Isle of Man 3G service, which is currently servicing less than a dozen users, should be available generally to the island's population by the end of 2002, Royce said.
Lack of 3G handsets has been one stumbling block to the rollout of the services. Sonera said on Wednesday that it had opened its 3G network in Finland, but said a commercial launch would not occur until more UMTS phones were available for customers, in 2004 or 2005.
For its part, Siemens is now mass producing the network level equipment needed for 3G infrastructure, Royce said. He said Siemens' Node B equipment is widely available to the company's customer base which includes T-Mobil in Germany, MaxMobil in Austria and Hutchinson in the UK and Italy.
Other European countries are just beginning the licence award process -- Ireland only announced the conditions of its 3G licence awards in December, and the Czech Telecommunications Office has just received two bids for its licences.
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