Written by: Gertie Alsenmyr, Joakim Bergström, Mattias Hagberg, Anders Milén, Walter Müller, Håkan Palm, Himke van der Velde, Pontus Wallentin and Fredrik Wallgren

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Handover between WCDMA and GSM allows the GSM network to be used to give fallback coverage for WCDMA technology. This means that subscribers can experience seamless services—even with a phased build-out of WCDMA—which is of importance to the commercial launches in 2003. As the leading total system provider, Ericsson has developed technologies that overcome the challenges of interworking between WCDMA and GSM. For example, Ericsson was first to demonstrate handover from WCDMA to GSM in a live network.

In this article, the authors describe features such as cell re-selection between WCDMA and GSM, compressed mode measurements, the WCDMA-to-GSM cell-change order, handover from WCDMA to GSM, and handover from GSM to WCDMA.

[First published in Ericsson Review no. 01, 2003]