Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer ZTE announced in Beijin Thursday that it would provide WCDMA handsets supporting television services to British Telecom.

Under an agreement signed by the two companies, ZTE will cooperate with BT Movio under British Telecom to develop WCDMA mobile phones jointly.

WCDMA is one of the three international technologies for third generation mobile communication, mainly used in Europe. The other two are CDMA2000 from America and TD-SCDMA from China.

The agreement was an important step into the European market, said ZTE. The company had previous cooperation with the world's largest 3G operator Hutchison Whampoa, TELUS from Canada and companies in Italy.

Mobile phones jointly developed by the two companies would adopt a technology named DAB-IP. ZTE is the world's first company supporting that technology on 3G. The handsets are expected to be the first group of commercialized mobile phones based on DAB-IP in the world.

British Telecom is a leading operator and BT Movio is responsible for its mobile entertainment service. The company announced last week that it is to start mobile television service from Oct. 1.

There are many different technologies used in mobile television, including T-DMB, DVB-H, DAB-IP and MediaFLO. ZTE said it had covered all the major technologies and its television mobile phone would be launched on the domestic market this year.

Source: Xinhua