Mobile telephone operator Peoples teams up with Ericsson to develop data

Mobile telephone operator Peoples has teamed up with Ericsson to develop data applications in its $300 million network-upgrade plan.

The applications will be for Peoples' general packet radio service (GPRS) offering, to be launched by the third quarter next year.

GPRS enables 115 kilobits per second data transmission speeds to handsets supporting Internet surfing, stock trading and news updates.

Peoples said about $70 million to $100 million of the upgrade budget would be for GPRS services.

Peoples will set up an application development team to work with Ericsson's SAR-based Applications Development Centre.