No longer will EDGE technology belong to the list of protocols with an uncertain future. As some industry experts look at it, EDGE is ramping up in spite of its weaknesses.
It is taking advantage of the boom of its predecessor, GSM/GPRS, another technology that has enjoyed a charmed life.
Today, 106 operators around the world have deployed EDGE technology in some form, said Chris Pearson, president of 3G Americas, which espouses the technology.
In the United States, operators Cingular Wireless L.L.C., AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc. are major names in the evolution of EDGE. Month after month, carriers around the world announce the installation of the protocol, whether in Asia, Europe or North America.
AWS recently announced that the city and county of Honolulu placed an order for 1,600 EDGE wireless modem cards for its police, fire and emergency service officers. Providing average network speeds of about 100 kilobits per second, AWS said its EDGE network covers 7,500 cities and towns as well as 30,000 miles of highways across the United States.
Forty-six carriers already have EDGE across the Americas, while 60 of them are in other parts of the world. Even Europe-which spurned EDGE, preferring to jump right from GPRS to UMTS-has begun to see the beauty of the piecemeal transition to the third-generation protocol.
Eighteen operators with UMTS on their roadmaps are now turning to EDGE as a complement. AWS has six cities with UMTS, even though it offers EDGE service nationwide.
It may not have had the deluge of handsets and other devices of its GSM predecessor, but original equipment manufacturers are beginning to see the fruits of research and development. Up to 10 devices, including mobile phones and air cards, have been rolled out; eight as phones and two as PCMCIA laptop cards.
Pearson said 15 more handsets will be released by the first quarter of next year. “We are in the beginning of a lot of manufacturing activity,” said Pearson.
Major infrastructure players are dipping their hands in the EDGE bowl. Alcatel Corp., L.M. Ericsson, Motorola Inc., Nortel Networks Ltd., Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG all have contracts and differentiating strategies for this technology.
From the point of view of devices, the company list is long: Intermec, Itronix, LG Electronics, NEC Corp., Nokia, PalmOne, Panasonic, Pantech, Research In Motion Ltd., Samsung, Siemens, Sierra Wireless and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P.
Handsets and personal digital assistants are being customized for vertical applications as part of a GSM global ecosystem, said Pearson. Although most of the GSM phones are not EDGE capable, some of the vendors rolled out devices with an eye to an EDGE future. One of them is Nokia with its 6200 phone, which is capable of offering EDGE services. EDGE is cost effective, according to the industry observers, and it provides data speeds in the expected range of between 100 kbps and 130 kbps.
In the biggest subscriber market of China, operator China Unicom is deploying EDGE in spite of the flurry of CDMA news on the market. The top technology is still GSM, and this lends itself easily for the flowering of EDGE. China Mobile already is committed to EDGE services.
Korea remains the only significant market without much discussion of EDGE, even though the country is poised to migrate to UMTS service.
India is also on the radar for EDGE. Three operators, Airtel, Hutchison Max Telecom and Idea Cellular, have EDGE commitments. In Brazil, carriers TIM and Claro have also committed to EDGE.
