Europe's future mobile telephony system

Building on the huge success of its homegrown cellular system, Europe is planning a next-generation wireless system to handle data as well as voice, and-it is hoped-lay the foundation for universal roaming. The system being developed in the framework of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System). In parallel, the International Telecommunication Union, based in Geneva, is formulating IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications) 2000, which is to be a family of systems that will let users roam worldwide with the same handset, and which will include UMTS as a subset.