A group of 26 wireless carriers and telecoms equipment makers, including Britain's Vodafone Group Plc, Cingular Wireless LLC, Germany's Siemens AG, France's Alcatel and Japan's NEC Corp. and DoCoMo have agreed to develop an advanced mobile phone standard capable of sending large files quickly, this move is in hopes of increasing demand for cellphones with a large displays for playing games and watching movies, and to help handset makers cut costs through mass production. Services based technology will offer transmission speeds more than 10 times as fast as the current third-generation (3G) service which offers about 2Mbps transmission peak. Specifications will be ready by 2007. no date has been set for a commercial launch.

- MORE