Nortel has been selected to supply Verizon Wireless with one of the industry's most advanced CDMA 1xEV-DO Revision (Rev.) A technology beginning in the third quarter of 2006. This upgrade will provide data speeds significantly faster than current capabilities and meet customer demand for more high-bandwidth, real-time wireless services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video telephony and advanced multimedia applications. Financial details of the agreement are not being disclosed.

Verizon Wireless is currently trialing new, low-latency applications with Nortel EV-DO Rev. A technology, including push-to-talk, fixed mobile convergence, VoIP and messaging services.

"Successful trials of EV-DO Rev. A have demonstrated the technology's potential for taking the Verizon Wireless broadband experience to new heights," said Ed Salas, vice president of network planning, Verizon Wireless. "We look forward to continuing to bring new services to the market based on our enhanced network capabilities."

Nortel has been a key supplier to Verizon Wireless' nationwide network for over a decade. Nortel was the primary infrastructure supplier in San Diego for Verizon Wireless' initial commercial deployment of BroadbandAccess, which leverages EV-DO Revision 0 technology, in October 2003.

"Nortel's EV-DO Rev. A solution allows Verizon Wireless to introduce new, real-time services such as video and other streaming media that rely on quality of services capabilities," explained Doug Wolff, vice president and general manager, CDMA, Nortel. "These new services provide a very powerful end-user experience that increase customer loyalty."

EV-DO Rev. A allows Verizon Wireless to provide higher network transmission speeds with lower latency to ensure the highest quality user experiences. Nortel's EV-DO Rev. A solution is capable of providing peak data rates of up to 3.1 Mbps on the forward link (information flowing from the cellular base station to the subscriber) and up to 1.8 Mbps on the reverse link (information flowing from the subscriber back to the cellular base station). Nortel has been a major contributor to the development of 1xEV-DO Rev 0 and Rev. A standards in 3GPP2 and proposed key concepts to the standards for improving the transmission capabilities.

Nortel is an industry innovator at the forefront of all broadband access technologies, including wide area cellular, wireline and wireless LAN. Nortel has designed, installed and launched more than 300 wireless networks in over 70 countries.