The long-awaited arrival of high-speed mobile Internet access in Europe has come a little closer after the successful completion on the Isle of Man of the first data call over a third generation (3G) network.
The Internet Protocol packet data call on Manx Telecom's network provided fast, high bandwidth access to the Internet and other data applications.
According to Mark Briers, a director at Manx Telecom, the call has opened the door to "some of the most exciting applications in our suite of 3G services, such as watching your football team score a goal, finding and booking a hotel, checking e-mail whilst travelling to business meetings or playing games with people across the world".
In May this year, British Telecom was forced to announce the delay of the launch of 3G services on the Isle of Man because of malfunctioning handsets.
BT said its Manx Telecom subsidiary, which had been running neck-and-neck with Japan's DoCoMo in the race to start 3G, was postponing its launch of the high-speed mobile Internet technology by at least three months because of a software problem in some handsets
