The German electronics giant has made strategic partnership with Japan's NEC to develop energy-saving cellular technology to make the ambition a reality.

Announcing this at a press conference on the sidelines of the 3G World Congress in Hong Kong recently, Lothar Pauly, president of the Siemens Communications Group, said, "By the year 2009, W-CDMA will account for an investment share of around 80 percent of Asian mobile networks."

"Thanks to our long-standing contacts with operators in the region. We see ourselves as being outstandingly positioned to equip our partners for the 3G age, as well. We're striving for a leading position," he said.

Siemens and NEC debuted the new generation of NB-880 W-CDMA (wideband code division multiple access) base stations in Hong Kong. Siemens also signed a 3G/W-CDMA contract with Malaysian operator Maxis.

"These base stations are more cost-effective for operators as they require around one-third less electricity and can serve larger numbers of subscribers," said Pauly.

"Today, more than ten million mobile subscribers worldwide are making phone calls over 3G/W-CDMA, with 90 percent of all W-CDMA users utilising Siemens/NEC technology. We intend to build up to this success in Asia," he said.

3G telephony is common in Japan but there still remains a huge untapped market in other countries where licenses and initial contracts being awarded now. Siemens is especially interested in China in this connection, where licenses are expected to be awarded next year, he said.

Siemens intends to provide the Chinese market with both 3G/W-CDMA as well as TD-SCDMA, the local 3G standard that the company is developing in a joint venture with Huawei. In only a few short years China will be the Asia's largest market, accounting for around 40 percent of operator investment in 3G/W-CDMA, the Siemens executive pointed out.

"By next year, Asia will already be overtaking Europe in demand for mobile enterprise solutions and driving the market for them," Pauly observed.

In Hong Kong, Siemens and NEC also debuted the new NB-880 3G/W-CDMA base station. This is already the third generation of 3G/W-CDMA base stations, which will begin shipping in January 2005, he disclosed.

These base stations come with the HSDPA turbo data service. HSDPA provides average download speeds of between two and three megabits per second for 3G/W-CDMA subscribers.

Siemens and NEC are the leader in HSDPA technology. In addition, these new base stations are extremely frugal when it comes to power consumption. Mobile operators can save around one-third on energy costs. Moreover, they can also serve twice as many subscribers as models from earlier generations and are therefore leading the market in terms of capacity, the president said.

Siemens Communications is the largest Group within Siemens and operates in more than 160 countries around the world. In fiscal 2003-04 (year-end September 30), its 60,000-strong workforce posted sales of about 18 billion euros.