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March 9, 2004

Cingular Sneaks in EDGE?

By Glenn Fleishman

A reader reports 121 Kbps performance on Cingular’s GPRS network—which means EDGE is enabled: A Bay Area reader noted in email that he was able to achieve speeds well above GPRS’s 40 Kbps or so limit using DSL Reports speed test. GPRS, a somewhat improved 2.5G cell data standard for GSM networks, uses one or more GSM-like channels to operate at speeds of 10 to 40 Kbps, typically. The number of channels can be limited in many areas. Our correspondent achieve 121 Kbps which is only possible with EDGE, GPRS’s 2.5G successor, and a step on the road to W-CDMA’s broadband speeds.

Cingular’s CTO told me last year that the company would have EDGE fully deployed by June of this year. Its acquisition of AT&T Wireless, which already has an almost entirely deployed EDGE network, means that Cingular doesn’t need to build out overlapping infrastructure.

I expect that when the merger is approved, Cingular customers will have immediate formal access to AT&T’s EDGE network. Cingular needs to offer this service to compete with T-Mobile’s unlimited GPRS plan (an extra $20 per month) and Verizon Wireless’s 1xRTT and 1xEvDO speeds (50 to 70 Kbps and 100 to 400 Kpbs, respectively).

Posted by Glennf at March 9, 2004 8:33 AM

Categories: 2.5G and 3G

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