This year, Ericsson is performing the demonstrations on 14 different 3G handsets from LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp and Sony Ericsson. In addition to streaming and video telephony, Ericsson is also demonstrating multi-party video conferencing, where a user is able to conduct five calls simultaneously. All of these services can be launched and run on Ericsson’s WCDMA systems today.

"Operators have been quite excited by our demonstrations, especially the advanced video telephony," said Ericsson marketing manager Michael Axelsson. "We're also showing them streaming at different bit rates, from 30Kpbs up to 180Kbps. For services such as news casting, we achieve high quality with low bit rates, while for music videos we use high bit rates where you get really good quality and sound too."

With Ericsson having made such an early start in the WCDMA arena, handset vendors and operators look to the company for answers on interoperability. Ericsson senior sales manager Jonas Danielson says this is why Ericsson set up the demonstration booth as an industry initiative. "We are very active in the standardization of WCDMA in line with the 3GPP protocols, so it is natural that we should host these interoperability demonstrations," he says.

Operators and handset vendors frequently try out their products at Ericsson's testing facilities in Kista, Sweden; one of a number of such centers around the world. They do so as they are likely to come across Ericsson's wide WCDMA footprint out in the field, so need to ensure interoperability with its networks. Also, because Ericsson has been so early with introduction of WCDMA systems, it has learned some valuable lessons that it can teach operators and handset vendors.

At its interoperability booth, Ericsson has also been giving operators a glimpse of how IMS will work, by demonstrating a whiteboard function. This allows users to scribble messages to one another while simultaneously conducting a conversation and using other services. Danielson says this shows the direction in which Ericsson is taking its customers. "Along with the introduction of IMS, we will be able to guide operators in introducing richer communication services," he says. "We're encouraging operators to come back to Cannes next year so can show them more about interoperability from an IMS perspective."