Europe's First Commercial Flash-OFDM Service Goes Live

T-Mobile has launched a Flash-OFDM network in Slovakia, the first of its kind in Europe. It offers 1 Mbps down and 256 Kbps up, and operates in the 450 MHz band with equipment from Flarion and Siemens. Qualcomm bought Flarion a couple months ago, and we highlighted the potential for Qualcomm to integrate OFDM technology into the next generation of CDMA. Another aspect to the deal was that 450 band -- until Ericsson and Nokia signalled their desire to bring GSM into that swath of spectrum, CDMA2000 and Flash-OFDM pretty much had it locked down. We noted some time ago that the 450 band was giving CDMA a back door into Europe, and now, with the Flarion buy, Qualcomm's influence on the continent could grow even further.

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