Nokia Siemens 'Dual Carrier EDGE' - useless for today's iPhone owners?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 29 March 2008 16:58

Business IT - Networking

We tried contacting NSN’s, Anna Lindén, Media Communications Manager of NSN’s Radio Access Communications division in Espoo, Finland for an answer, but must have called out of hours because it rang and rang until we got through to voicemail.

Instead of leaving a message there, we’ve emailed Anna Lindén, quoting “Ian Storrs” question (and providing the link to his comment and the CNET story), politely asking for an explanation, because we’d like to know - and update this story or write a new one with the correct answer.

As an iPhone owner, if the EDGE upgrade will work with my existing phone, that’s fantastic, but if not – no big deal – future phones will undoubtedly support this standard, just as today’s 3.5G HSPA phones support slower 3G and 2G networks and can switch between them as required.

It’s just that, if what Ian Storrs said is true, it would have been nice if NSN had made this clear in their statement, so as to avoid plenty of excitement from iPhone, Blackberry (etc) owners who think they’re about to receive a speed increase when what they’ll really need is a whole new handset – unless the handsets can also be software upgraded through a firmware update to work with the faster EDGE networks.

In a statement, Ari Lehtoranta, Head of Radio Access Business Unit, Nokia Siemens Networks said that: “By 2015, we expect to live in a broadband-IP world with five billion people ‘always on’ and therefore Nokia Siemens Networks is committed to protecting customer investments and continue to implement leading EDGE technology. Dual Carrier software upgrade is an easy and extremely cost efficient step to bring broadband user experience to GSM/EDGE networks”.

The statement continues that: Operators can serve their customers even better using the Dual Carrier solution as the demand for data services and connectivity is immense , proven by the steep increase on data services consumption in 3G/HSPA networks today. With this solution, 3G/HSPA operators can offer service continuity for their 3G services.

So, it’s time to welcome yet another new mobile communications standard. Just when you thought 2G technology was going to disappear in favour of 3G, 3.5G and whatever 4G technologies are promised, 2.5G EDGE gets a new lease of life, with EGRPS 2 set to boost it even further.