MUNICH, February 20, 2001 - Acterna, the new company formed by the May 23, 2000 merger of TTC and Wavetek Wandel Goltermann (WWG), today launches a solution designed to cut time to market for GPRS Terminals. The GPRS Option for the Acterna 4400 Series provides an integrated test environment that works with manufacturing, R&D and quality assurance functions. These factors combine to ensure that users of GPRS have both early and fully functional access to the new breed of services.

The Acterna 4400 Series is a full-featured test set providing the complete range of GSM transmitter and receiver measurements, including bit error rate testing and spectrum analysis, with complementing Audio, Codec and Multislot Options.

The new GPRS Option adds single and multi-slot analyser measurements, performing, for example, on multi-bursts to the Acterna 4400 Series. A highlight of the GPRS Option is the GPRS generator for single and multi-slot packet data traffic channels (PDTCH) with various pseudo-random bit patterns and Coding Schemes 1 through 4.

Achim Grolman, Acterna's 4400 Series Manager, says: "A recent survey found that the average operator pays almost 700 US-$ to win a customer, so they can't afford to lose the ones they have. This option helps to secure the investments already made and ensures that GPRS services will be available to customers quickly. Handsets can be tested from drawing board to outlet using the 4400."

Acterna continues to work on GPRS to provide call procedures and receiver measurements. These will allow manufacturers as well as network operators and service shops to perform more extensive tests including Block Error Rate and Bit Error Rate measurements.