T-Mobile Slovakia and Siemens worked together to announce the launch of the world's first nationwide commercial mobile broadband service using FLASH-OFDM network technology. The service is available in selected areas of Bratislava, and in 19 other cities around Slovakia.

The company says customers will experience mobile data speeds of 1 Mbps average in the downlink and up to 256 Kbps average in the uplink, making it suitable for both business and residential customers.

As part of this deployment, Siemens and Flarion are delivering to T-Mobile a complete FLASH-OFDM solution for the 450 MHz frequency spectrum: RadioRouter base stations, desktop modems and PC cards. Siemens had also the task of integrating the FLASH-OFDM network into T-Mobile Slovakia's existing mobile network.

With Flarion's FLASH-OFDM technology, mobile operators can seamlessly connect enterprise customers to corporate LANs and consumers to the Internet with the speed and low packet latency that exceed stringent wired network requirements, with mobile broadband and cellular coverage.

Using a FLASH-OFDM data card, users do not need to make any modifications to their user settings to experience broadband connectivity in a mobile environment. The spatial extension of the FLASH-OFDM cells in the 450 MHz frequency band makes this technology ideal, for example, for providing coverage in rural areas.