91ÊÓƵ

February 25, 1999 9:08 AM, EST

An agreement between two wireless communications organizations is expected to effort their 225 million tomers by providing them with global coverage.

The North American GSM Alliance LLC and the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium announced in February their efforts would lay the groundwork for interoperability between Global System for Mobile Communications, Time Division Multiple Access and Advanced Mobile Phone Service telephones throughout the world.

"The major benefits of this landmark agreement are three-fold. It will create a global footprint, enable a fully integrated feature set of services across the two technologies and provide a cost-effective way to meet the requirements of both customers and operators," said Bob Stapleton, president of Western Wireless, who spearheaded the effort for the alliance.

The agreement will enable wireless service providers from around the world to accelerate deployment of next generation, high-speed wireless packet data service features.

The UWCC is a consortium of more than 100 telecommunications carriers and vendors of wireless products and services. The North American GSM Alliance, L.L.C. is a group of U.S. and Canadian digital wireless PCS carriers.