The new services will be available for all subscribers nationwide, except Karakalpakistan Republic and Qashkadarya region, where they will be launched in a short while.

The testing period will last till mid-August 2008 and during this time the Ucell subscribers can use “Ucell Internet” and “Ucell WAP” services free of charge.

This came as a result of the Ucell network upgrade from the present 2G mobile telecom technology, which mainly supports voice-based communications.

“This step enables Ucell to make an extensive use of the new technology to rollout a complete range of new services.” Mr. Oguz Memiguven, Ucell’s General Director said. “I feel certain that our customers will appreciate this new step towards personal multimedia communications, for which our company has worked so hard.”

2G cellular systems combined with GPRS and EDGE are often described as "2.75G", that is, a technology between the second (2G) and third (3G) generations of mobile telephony. GPRS/EDGE provides more varieties of value-added data services, such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) access, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and for Internet communication services such as email and World Wide Web access. GPRS data transfer is charged per megabyte of traffic transferred.

It is evident, that the public’s demand for data-based communications is growing rapidly in Uzbekistan. But many interesting services are not yet available on the present network because of restrictions of the 2G technology. It is important to make a success of the faster-speed data services possible with GPRS and EDGE -- as a way of educating mobile phone users of the potential of 3G.

Ucell plans to launch 3G technology in late 2008. This service will enable people to have wide-area wireless voice telephony, video calls, and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment.