Region Recognized as a Key Growth Area for the World's Fastest to Market Wireless Technology

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SAO PAULO, Aug. 18, 1998 - Highlighting the accelerating expansion of cdmaOne™ in Central and South America, the CDMA Development Group (CDG) today announced the formation of an interest group within the CDG focusing on the Latin American region. The announcement was made at the CDMA Latin American Forum, which runs until August 19 at the Renaissance Sao Paulo Hotel.

"Latin America has become a tremendous area of growth for the cdmaOne community," said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. "In 1998, more than 10 cdmaOne networks are operating or deploying in seven countries throughout the region. The benefits cdmaOne brings to both urban centers and rural areas for mobile and fixed wireless applications makes it a perfect match for the requirements of the Latin American market."

The Latin American interest group builds on the success of similar organizations within the CDG. Other interest groups focus on the Asia Pacific region and Wireless Local Loop networks, two key areas in the emergence of cdmaOne as the leading technology for wireless. The Latin American interest group will bring together representatives from member companies to apply their collective experience and expertise to the region.

Other teams active within the CDG will benefit the Latin American region as well:

• Advanced Systems: Providing a graceful migration path from today's network to the third generation (3G) wireless system, Wideband cdmaOne ensures that operators making investments in cdmaOne will preserve their network investments while offering the most advanced features and services to their customers as the technology evolves. The ability of cdmaOne to evolve ensures that advanced features will be available rapidly within existing frequency bands.
• International Roaming: The CDG has been successful in establishing roaming agreements in Asia, both within the region and to North America. These efforts will continue to expand the worldwide footprint of cdmaOne. CDMA roaming capabilities already exist between Mexico and the United States and future efforts will broaden that coverage throughout Latin America. The CDG offers the cdmaConnect program to assist operators in establishing end-to-end IS-41 roaming by identifying solutions to the business, networking and back office requirements of an international roaming agreement.

For network operators, the advantages of cdmaOne over rival technologies include increased capacity, superior in-building penetration and cost-effective deployments. For their customers, cdmaOne provides superior voice quality, advanced calling features and data services, unrivalled privacy and security, extended battery life and talk time and unmatched reliability. These advantages have resulted in spectacular global subscriber growth, with more than 12.5 million people currently using cdmaOne service worldwide. This number is expected to reach at least 60 million by the year 2000.

"The tremendous success of cdmaOne in reaching current global subscriber levels three years after beginning commercial service is a testament to the strength of the technology," noted LaForge. "We intend to keep the momentum going and build on the achievements to date. The cdmaOne platform is unequaled in its ability to provide an evolutionary path to advanced 3G systems while offering the current market industry leading features and services."