OXFORD, United Kingdom-While all the major European cell-phone operators have either launched or announced target dates for GPRS services, a growing number of technology developers are voicing concerns.
One of the most recent to join the GPRS detractors is Ubinetics, which is involved in GPRS testing. The firm’s Chief Executive Officer Ali Pourtaheri claimed interoperability among different vendors’ equipment is becoming a real issue and has parallels with the early days of the WAP.
“Also, operators have to learn that packet-based networks are significantly different to existing circuit-switched voice infrastructure,” Pourtaheri said.
The much-hyped speed of GPRS services at 115 kilobits per second (kbps) would seem, in practice, to be significantly less. BT Cellnet claimed that up to 30 kbps is achievable, and Orange said its services will launch with speeds of between 30 kbps and 40 kbps. However, a number of testing houses say that 12 kbps is a more realistic number for reliable data transmission, and at this speed, provides a more reasonable battery life for GPRS phones.
