In brief: Nortel unleashes GSM/UMTS base station

Plus: MPLS/Frame group announces news members.

Nortel last week unveiled a GSM/Universal Mobile Telecommunications System wireless base station the company says lets wireless operators lower operational costs and offers 3G services.

Nortel’s GSM-UMTS Base Transceiver Station 18000 is designed to support GSM and UMTS wireless technology standards, and to address the increasing number of voice and data subscribers. It will let operators reduce operating costs by handling up to 50% more voice and data subscribers per base station compared with other commercial dual-mode base stations, Nortel says.

The unit limits the need for the costly cell splitting often used to increase wireless network capacity.

The MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance announced last week that six new members have joined the group. The new members are BellSouth, the Defense Information Systems Agency, Data Connection, Huawei Technologies, Seranoa and Telefonica.

In April 2003 the MPLS Forum and Frame Relay Forum merged to create one group focused on “advancing the deployment of multi-vendor multi-service label-switching networks,” according to the group.