Nokia has announced recently that it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Army to evaluate Nokia technology in the areas of PCS, WCDMA 3G, GSM, WiMAX and advanced wireless networking protocols for potential military and defense applications.

The CRADA with the Research, Development, and Engineering Command, Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) demonstrates the continued momentum of Nokia's government division in the U.S., particularly its expanding relationship with the Army.

"The approach for the evaluation of Nokia's technologies is to utilize a collaborative effort, which will leverage the strength and experience of CERDEC resources and Nokia's technical wireless expertise," stated a CERDEC spokesperson. "This program will evaluate the capabilities of various Nokia products and systems to determine if they can potentially meet ARMY requirements for high-speed data communications."

The project consists of a series of tests, demonstrations, experiments and exploratory exchange efforts that will begin in the fourth quarter of 2006 and last for five years. The devices and systems to be evaluated can potentially meet the requirements for deployed forces to have access to high-capacity throughput to support Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence information flow.