Motorola demonstrated a functional GPRS network at a press conference held in Westcliff yesterday, connecting its new GPRS-ready phones to the Vodacom GPRS test network at 115kbps - about twice the speed of a landline modem connection.
The telecoms, broadband, two-way radio and chip vendor managed to get data rates of up to 40kbps on a file transfer from a remote FTP server through a cellphone, and also demonstrated an online cellphone version of "Who wants to be a millionaire?" running over GPRS. Motorola already offers the "Who wants to be a millionaire" application on Vodacom`s network, and claimed 210 409 hits during the first week of operation in SA.
New phones shown by Motorola include the Java-ready Accompli 008, the sleek V.66 tri-band phone, the high-performance Timeport 280 capable of synchronising with a desktop PC or other device, and the consumer-targeted Talkabout 192.
All the phones are GPRS-ready, although neither of the current cellular network service providers currently offer GPRS beyond their limited testing roll-outs. Cell C will also not offer GPRS when it is launched.
Motorola expects GPRS to be available around mid-2002. It is expected that Motorola will provide Vodacom with the back-end infrastructure for its GPRS service.
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