Azerbaijan, Bkau, 21 February / Trend corr. S.Babayeva / Three mobile operators, with GSM standards, of Azerbaijan were proposed frequences to render 3G communication service, Ali Abbasov, the Azerbaijani Comiunication and IT Minister, stated.
"We proposed them frequencies and they are holding negotiations on this issue among themselves," the Minister said.
Abbasov said that the Ministry is ready to consider the license to operators, when they would settle the technical problems in the first quarter of 2008.
Out of operating four mobile operators in Azerbaijan, Azercell Telecom, Bakcell and Azerfon are GSM operators and Catel is the CDMA operator. Today the number of wireless mobile users exceeds 4mln.
3G was developed by the International Electron Communication Union, and is known as the International Mobile Telecommunications 2000. 3G is a set of services which unite high-speed mobile network with the Internet and radio. It enables the video-telephone communication, watching films and TV programs on mobile phone, etc.
There are 2 types of 3G standards worldwide: UMTS (or W-CDMA) and CDMA2000. UMTS is mainly spread in Europe, CDMA2000 - in Asia and the United States. According to Wireless Intelligence, at the end of November 2006, there were 364mln 3G subscribers in the world, including 93.5mln connected to UMTS network and 271.1mln to СDMA2000.