Although best known for their cellphone handsets, Finnish company Nokia also manufacture equipment for the base-stations that carry network traffic. With T-Mobile US beginning to roll out high-speed 3G WCDMA, they've selected Nokia's hardware to bring mobile broadband to their subscribers.

WCDMA, or Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, can - in ideal circumstances - reach burst rates of up to 2Mbps, making it ideal for the high-bandwidth media streaming and download that carriers are hoping will be the latest cash-cow in the cellular industry.  Nokia, having already supplied 3G equipment for T-Mobile in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as being behind almost half of the 134 commercially launched WCDMA networks, is providing the network operator with its latest Flexi WCDMA Base Station, a model that combines modular expansion with low-cost deployment.

"The Nokia Flexi Base Station gives T-Mobile USA adaptable deployment options while delivering full capacity and future evolution capabilities" Ari Lehtoranta, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Networks, Nokia

That future for WCDMA is likely to involve HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) and HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access), a relatively straightforward software upgrade to the base-stations which could see data speeds of up to 14.4Mbps downstream and 5.8Mbps upstream.  However these speeds are likely to be some way in the future, as T-Mobile concentrates on expanding its current WCDMA coverage.

Nokia Press Release