Sept/Oct 2003

While GPRS has introduced mobile Internet connectivity with transmission times surpassing those of dial-up modems, the hunger for even faster transmission remains strong, and third-generation mobile networks are still only in the very early stages of roll-out.

There is therefore still a significant head of steam behind what is known as EDGE technology, which promises to increase the speed of GPRS data transfer more than threefold without requiring new mobile infrastructure.

However, a meeting of the EDGE Operators' Forum in September, there was an admission that 3G technology would eventually become prevalent. Rather than competing with this, delegates were told that EDGE and 3G would play complementary roles in future, with 3G becoming dominant in urban areas and EDGE in rural and semi-urban areas.

According to the GSA, approaching 50 mobile infrastructure operators worldwide have now committed to EDGE deployment, and there are predictions that EDGE will be a standard feature in all new GPRS phones from next year. Also expected are dual-mode EDGE/3G phones.

 

The first full roll-out of an EDGE-based network was launched by Cingular Wireless in the US this June.