"Ericsson is proud of our long-standing partnership with Cingular, which has continued from Cingular's GSM rollout to migration to 3G networks," said Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson. "We take it to heart that Cingular trusts the capability and perseverance of our people to take them forward in delivering the services and advantages of a true 3G network to its customers."

"Ericsson has the expertise required to help us deliver true 3G services to a large number of our customers," said Kris Rinne, Chief Technical Officer for Cingular Wireless. "Their experience in deploying 3G networks throughout the world makes them an invaluable partner as we begin to deliver similar services across America."

Ericsson HSDPA represents a natural, fully standardized evolution of UMTS that will improve the peak data downlink rate to as high as 14 Mbit/s and offer operators more than twice the system capacity within the current radio spectrum.

HSDPA will enable operators to deliver more advanced mobile broadband services such as Internet and corporate access. Its unprecedented data rates will allow users to download audio, video and large files or attachments significantly faster than with traditional UMTS.

Cingular Wireless will also benefit from Ericsson networks and services obtained through its recent acquisition of AT&T Wireless, which rolled out Ericsson UMTS equipment in several U.S. markets earlier this year.