Telecommunications manufacturer Ericsson and national telco Telstra have upgraded the Greater Sydney
GSM network to also accommodate General Packet Radio Switch (GPRS) data
services, after demonstrating the technology locally earlier this month.
GPRS is designed particularly to take advantage of mobile data services
such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Within this network system,
data transfer can be almost instantaneous, and data is charged according to
the amount transmitted, rather than the connection time currently core to
the GSM system. With GPRS, users are always connected, and pay for data as
they use it.
With the network, telstra.com customers will be able to access WAP-based
information, through a range of prototype terminals Ericsson has developed
for GPRS and started demonstrating this month.
As part of the June 14 GPRS network demonstration to display the
technology’s capabilties, Ericsson held a three-way chat session between
two GPRS mobiles and PCs at the demonstration site and a desktop PC at a
remote location.