France Telecom, Ericsson sign 3G patent pact

France Telecom and Ericsson have signed a patent license agreement on 3G technology under a France Telecom licensing program, a Wireless News report said.

The report said that under the terms of the agreement, France Telecom granted Ericsson a worldwide license to France Telecom's seminal Turbo Codes patents for use in Ericsson's 3G mobile communications products encompassing W-CDMA to HSDPA.

Invented by Claude Berrou and Alain Glavieux of Ecole Nationale Surperieure des Telecommunications (ENST) in Brittany, France, Turbo Codes had been adopted by the leading 3G cellular standards, 3GPP (UMTS/W-CDMA) and 3GPP2 (cdma2000), in order to provide previously unavailable error correction performance at commercially viable costs, the report said.

According to industry analyst estimates, 3G standards were expected to represent at least a third of all cellular users by 2009, the report further said.