Telemobil to launch Zapp in nine days

Telemobil on December 7 is to launch the Zapp Mobile service based on CDMA 2000 (Code Division Multiple Access) technology on the 450 MHz broadband, which will provide for data transmission at 153 Kbs speed, Diwaker Singh, the company’s chairman, maintained.

“Zapp Mobile will initially cover 40% of Romania’s population, namely more than 30 large and small towns, a high number of villages and 3,000 kilometres of Romania’s national roads,” Singh said.

In addition to the high speed of data transmission, Telemobil’s new service will provide mobile Internet, high-quality voice services, HTML web pages visualisation, web access and solutions customised for the companies.

The value of the investment needed to build the network is estimated to stand at 350 million dollars and will be finalised by the beginning of 2003. Some 220 million dollars have been invested in equipment, software, infrastructure and personnel so far.

The company’s management wants the service to cover 95% of Romania’s population by the beginning of 2003.

The money will be supplied by the main investor, Inquam, supported by the US-based Qualcomm and by the investment fund Omnia, by the equipment suppliers and with international loans.

Telemobil spent some eight million dollars for the advertising campaign that has recently begun.

The main network equipment suppliers will be Lucent, for the base stations and switchboards and Harris and Kathrein for antennas. The Israeli Comverse company will provide the platforms for added services.

The CDMA-compatible terminals, produced by Hyunday Curitel and Synertek, will comprise a high-speed modem and a Microsoft browser allowing the user to connect to the Internet. The subscribers will be charged depending on the amount of transferred information.

The first thousand of CDMA-compatible phones made by Hyunday Curitel were delivered in October, while the next 8,000 are scheduled to be received by Telemobil by the end of November. Hyunday Curitel will export 300,000 CDMA-compatible mobile phones to Romania by the end of next year.

The data will be sent nation-wide with the help of the National Radio-Communications Company (SNR), with which Telemobil concluded a 5.5 million-dollar annual contract in September.

The CDMA network is used in North and South America, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong. China has recently announced plans to introduce this digital telecommunication system as well. The number of CDMA users amounts to 100 million throughout the world.

Telemobil will also maintain SunTel service based on LEMS (Low Emission Mobile System) technology for at least another two years. SunTel subscribers may switch to the new CDMA service.

The first mobile telephony service in Romania worked under Telemobil name, under NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) system, introduced in 1993 by Telefonica Romania, which had been founded by the Spanish Telefonica in 1992.