UMTS 2000 Newsreel - 13th October 2000, Barcelona, Spain.  Re-produced with kind permission from Mobile Communications International.

The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) celebrates its second anniversary at UMTS 2000 with its biggest ever presence at an international trade event. The GSA's mission is to promote GSM in new and existing markets; its members collectively represent 80 per cent of GSM market share.

In Barcelona the membership grew with the election of three new members Airnet, Faith and Matsushita. Airnet Communications Corporation is a US-based manufacturer of GSM base stations, Faith from Japan is a sound and multimedia specialist whose technology is used by i-mode customers to download ringtones over-the-air, and Matsushita is the UK arm of the Japanese industrial giant responsible for the manufacture of Panasonic GSM phones worldwide.

Also at Barcelona the GSA announced a New Ventures Program to promote dialogue and the exchange of ideas between GSM/3G suppliers and start-up application developers. The program is open to any content provider or application developer which has been in business for less than two years. The aim is to provide these start-ups, which typically are short of resources, with access to the accumulated experience and expertise of the GSM vendor community.

The GSA stand at Barcelona has been created to provide a cost-effective means for members to exhibit. On the stand are GSA members Comptel, Filtronic, Intel's Wireless Competence Centre, Logica, Schlumberger, ScoreBoard, X-Net and ZTE. GSA is also mobilising its members to present a one-day 'Introduction to GSM' tutorial on the eve of IBC's GSM Americas conference in Rio de Janeiro in December. The tutorial is aimed at regulators, potential operators and investors across Latin America.

Further information about the GSA