Cingular Wireless is to trial 3G services in Atlanta and has selected Lucent to provide the networking equipment.

No live customers will be involved in the trial when kicks off in the summer - Cingular is using its own people as guinea pigs to evaluate mobile voice, high-speed data and multimedia services. The trial will also enable the mobile network operator to "overcome technical challenges before pursuing broader deployments".

The UMTS-based network will support testing of High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA)technology, which one day will handle data speeds of up to 14.4 Megabits per second (Mbps). It's designed to handle VoIP services too.

Lucent is supplying all the kit for the trial, including the 3G data cards. ®

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