3G Americas announced that global TDMA and GSM subscribers reached 763.2 million as of March 31, 2002 and the milestone 100 million global TDMA subscribers was attained in May 2002 according to EMC.

Additionally, EMC reported that TDMA represented 94.1 million subscribers in the Americas. GSM is currently growing at an annual rate of 42.37% with nearly 18.4 million subscribers at the end of March 2002.

Commenting on the figures, Chris Pearson, Executive Vice President of 3G Americas stated, "GSM will continue to grow at an exponential rate as more and more operators commit to the GSM evolution. TDMA operators in North America -- AT&T Wireless, Cingular, and Rogers Wireless - are committed to the GSM-evolutionary path to 3G. And, in Latin America and the Caribbean, TDMA operators in Argentina, Bermuda, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru have also adopted the GSM technology strategy."

This message was further emphasized by Bill Clift, Chairman of the Board of Governors for 3G Americas in his statement, "With the exceptional growth of the GSM technology in the Americas, GSM is clearly providing operators and their customers the leading global standard for roaming and seamless evolution to Third Generation high speed data services. What this means to the Americas is the ability to communicate and interoperate on a global level with over 175 countries throughout the world."

"EMC estimates that TDMA subscribers in the Americas, which account for 96% of global TDMA subscribers, will exceed the 100 million mark in July 2002," commented Mike Davies, Senior Research Analyst responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean at EMC. "Together, TDMA and GSM account for over 80% of global digital cellular subscribers today, and EMC forecasts that there will be over 1.5 billion TDMA, GSM, and W-CDMA subscribers at the end of 2005."

The founding members of 3G Americas include AT&T Wireless (USA), Cingular Wireless (USA), Ericsson AB, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Openwave Systems, Rogers Wireless (Canada), Siemens, and Telecom Personal (Argentina).