NEC’s Super 3G Lab Down Under

The high-speed 3G mobile telephony networks of today will feel like the slowest of modems in a few years, thanks in part to the work of a Melbourne-based team of researchers at NEC Australia. The company’s mobile research and development division is charged with creating technologies that will shape the next generation of mobile networks two to five years from now, as networks move from today’s speeds of about 3.6Mbps to 14Mbps and beyond. The Melbourne team represents about one third of all of NEC’s research and development capability in its field. 

Assistant general manager Gordon Gay and his group of 100 engineers at NEC Australia are creating enabling technologies that underlie mobile communications - the engines that allow handsets to talk to the network at high data rates. The team, which has been in place for more than 10 years, contributed to the current 3G standard. It also built the first transportable 3G prototype for the Japanese telecommunications carrier NTT. Today its activities focus on extensions to 3G technology, such as HSDPA, which will accelerate network data rates from today’s 300Kbps to about 3.6Mbps. Continue>>