Vodafone Leads The Way With First Public GPRS Demonstration At The NEC

Vodafone is delighted to announce that its first public demonstration of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) technology will take place this week at the Service Management Europe 2000 exhibition, at the NEC in Birmingham (14-16 March 2000).

Vodafone has extended coverage from its local GPRS network in Newbury to provide coverage for the show. Vodafone's Newbury GPRS network has been running since 1st January 2000 and has successfully been used to demonstrate email access, web browsing and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) using an Ericsson PDA, handset and laptop computer. More recently, Vodafone has provided WAP access to a rich variety of content available through Vodafone Interactive, Vodafone's internet portal. These applications will be shown ‘live' at the NEC.

GPRS is a high-speed wireless data service that, like the Internet, uses packet-switched techniques rather than the circuit-switched techniques traditionally used in voice telephony networks. It is particularly suited to handling data traffic such as the Internet, Intranet or WAP based services and is set to revolutionise information access from mobile phones. Users will be able to use their mobile to access information and content that would normally only be available to them via a fixed PC at home or in the office.

Richard Jarvis, Managing Director of Vodafone Value Added and Data Services, said: "Customers read about new products and technologies all the time, but rarely get the opportunity to see the technologies before they are commercially available. We hope the demonstrations will show customers how they will benefit from the enhanced services GPRS can offer, wherever they are."

In addition to increased data speeds, GPRS also uniquely offers users the benefit of being "always connected" to their chosen services. Once logged on, the user remains 'on-line' and can receive or send data at any time, without incurring the cost of a permanent connection or the inconvenience of continually dialling up to re-connect.