AirTouch Praises Historic Agreement on Third-Generation Wireless Standards.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 4, 1999--

AirTouch Communications, Inc., the world's largest wireless communications provider, today lauded an historic agreement reached by major wireless operators and equipment suppliers around the world on a globally harmonized standard for the next generation of wireless systems.

The agreement on a third-generation, or 3G, standard marks a landmark in global industry co-operation. If the harmonization agreement is adopted by the appropriate standards bodies, consumers will enjoy a host of benefits, including seamless global roaming, lower-cost handsets and airtime, and a proliferation of new communications services, including high-speed data applications carried at rates of up to 2 Mbps.

The agreement, forged by members of the Operators Harmonization Group during recent meetings in Toronto, focused on a global Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 3G standard, which offers a clear transition path for operators using several of today's second-generation digital technologies.

The meetings were attended by more than 30 of the world's largest wireless operators and more than a dozen wireless equipment manufacturers, representing all of the world's major wireless standards. The Toronto meetings culminated a consensus-building process that AirTouch, among other operators, has worked on for two years.

"This Toronto agreement represents a win for the entire industry and for consumers," said Craig Farrill, Vice President of Strategic Technology at AirTouch. "This collaboration brings the world a step closer to the high-bandwidth, consumer-friendly wireless networks of the future."

AirTouch Communications is the largest wireless company in the world based on the 44 million customers served by its global ventures. AirTouch has 19 million proportionate customers based on its ownership share in cellular, paging, and personal communications services in the United States, Belgium, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Korea, Spain, and Sweden. AirTouch also has an interest in the Globalstar satellite system. On January 15, 1999, AirTouch and Vodafone Group Plc announced a definitive agreement to merge. If consummated, the transaction would result in the creation of a global wireless company with more than 29 million customers in 23 countries. For more information, visit AirTouch's web site at www.airtouch.com.

Addendum: Further details of the agreement

Members of the OHG have compiled a Technical Framework Document that will be submitted to the various world standards organizations. The document will serve as a blueprint of agreed-upon technical issues for regional standards bodies to consider and implement as they establish a final 3G CDMA standard. This process will be initiated when the agreement is formally presented at a meeting of the world standardization body of the United Nations known as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) being held in Beijing on Monday. AirTouch fully supports this document and will undertake the steps necessary to facilitate its progress through all the relevant industry organizations.

The agreement effectively addresses the needs of both the W-CDMA and cdma2000 communities to form specifications for a Direct-Sequence CDMA mode, a Multi-Carrier CDMA mode and a Time Division Duplex CDMA mode within the harmonized 3G CDMA standard.

The foundation of a technical harmonization agreement for each mode was developed after lengthy technical discussions concerning the similarities and benefits of various CDMA approaches. It became evident as a result of these discussions that the various proposals had similar fundamental building blocks, opening the door to harmonization. A simple technical description of the agreement follows.

The Direct Sequence mode will utilize a chip rate of 3.84 Mcps and will support asynchronous and synchronous operation incorporating the concepts of all the 3G Direct Sequence proposals to the ITU. The Multi-Carrier mode will utilize a chip rate of 3.6864 Mcps and will support synchronous operation to ensure it can overlay existing cdmaOne networks. The Time Division Duplex mode will have a chip rate of 3.84 Mcps and will draw from the various 3G ITU Time Division Duplex proposals.

These harmonized parameters will permit the development of inexpensive, multimode handsets and infrastructure through global economies of scale. In addition, the agreement also provides for efficient and effective support of all three CDMA modes on both ANSI-41 and GSM-MAP networks.

TDMA (IS-136) operators have also participated in the 3G standards process, although the OHG activities have focused on CDMA systems. Members of the OHG believe that the ITU 3G standards should also encompass a TDMA-based 3G standard that draws on the TDMA-based 3G proposals that have been submitted to the ITU.

The harmonization agreement for the 3G CDMA modes supports previous standards efforts of the ITU-R TG 8/1 committee as well as the guidelines established by the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue.

For a fax copy of this or other AirTouch press releases, please call 1-800-344-7531 or visit the AirTouch web site at www.airtouch.com.