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Telecommunications In praise of EDGE: the "Cinderella" of GSM technology
Telecommunications In praise of EDGE: the "Cinderella" of GSM technology | In praise of EDGE: the "Cinderella" of GSM technology |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Wednesday, 23 August 2006 | |
  
According to ABI Research, "EDGE can best be described as the Cinderella of the cellular handset world." Principal analyst Stuart Carlaw says that, "EDGE is downplayed in the market because it cannot really provide a mobile broadband experience and is therefore not seen as being at the cutting edge of cellular handset evolution; it is viewed purely as an evolutionary step on the GSM ladder, and industry attention is very much focused on the newer technologies such as WCDMA and HSDPA. That view is further compounded by the fact that operators do not actively report EDGE numbers in the public domain." According to ABI research director, Jake Saunders, "This lack of general market attention belies the real importance of the role EDGE plays in delivering mobile services today and will play in the effective delivery of content in the network of tomorrow." ABI Research says the industry as a whole should pay more attention to EDGE because it is the only choice for some carriers today to support any type of near-acceptable mobile broadband experience, especially those with no 3G licenses or those waiting for 4G. "When the prospects for EDGE are viewed in the context of next generation networks, its true value comes to light. The technology still represents the only viable choice for supporting seamless service delivery on a very wide area basis. Neither WiMAX nor LTE [Long Term Evolution] nor HSUPA will be rolled out with enough geographic coverage to guarantee minimum service requirements on a wide scale." EDGE is claimed to provide three times the data capacity of GPRS whilst using the existing GSM spectrum and to offer up to three times the GPRS data rate to the end user. In most cases GPRS enabled base stations and base station controllers can be upgraded to EDGE by way of relatively low cost software and hardware upgrades, and because EDGE is a GPRS enhancement there is very little modification needed within a GPRS core network. According to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) there are 204 GSM/EDGE networks deployed in 113 countries and 151 in 88 countries are operating commercially. Also, 67 operators are deploying EDGE in combination with WCDMA and 40 of these networks are in commercial service. GSA estimates that, in May 2006 there jut over 300 EDGE devices on the market. However despite ABI's claims for EDGE and this market interest, the EDGE Operators Forum, a cooperative global industry partnership among the major operators and vendors that have commercially committed to deploy EDGE, appears to be moribund. According to the GSA website, the Forum works in close cooperation with it, the GSM Association and 3G Americas and is supported by leading vendors including Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks and Siemens. However the page devoted to the forum on the GSA website suggests that the Forum has not met since November 2003. |
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