EDGE looking spry in old age, completes first Downlink Dual Carrier call
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Dec 8th 2008 1:49AM
posted Dec 8th 2008 1:49AM
3G's awesome, but for huge swaths of the GSM world, 2G is still -- and will continue to be -- a hugely important way to get data moved around the mobile interwebs. To help bridge the gap and keep the 2G folks from falling hopelessly behind, EDGE Evolution is the knight in shining armor, and Nokia Siemens is keeping the ball rolling by successfully testing Downlink Dual Carrier for the first time, a technology that doubles legacy EDGE speeds to a max of 592kbps on the downlink. Unlike UMTS and HSPA solutions, Downlink Dual Carrier promises to be a software-only solution, which means it should theoretically be quick, easy, and cheap for carriers to deploy en masse. And hey, as long as AT&T and T-Mobile have less than 100 percent 3G coverage -- which as far as we can tell is still years away -- we'll take whatever little boost we can get.[Via MobileTechNews]
FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
See, on engadgetmobile, that's really not hard to do.
And yet it's still annoying. Go figure...
Ohhh really? So Engadget Mobil isn't that popular? Alright, I'll keep the "First!!!!!!" to the regular Engadget site for now on.
How considerate of you.
SOMEONE GET THIS MAN A NOBEL PRIZE.
Its not "knight and shining armor"
Dope. Shining "armor" is nothing without a Knight IN it.
Just to be crystal clear, the "software only" upgrade is for the base-stations only, not handsets. DLDC requires band-new handsets to be developed in order to support this, same with other features of EGRPS2 like higher-order modulation - so while this might get rolled out on networks starting next year, don't expect handsets to support it until end of 2009 earliest.
I know EDGE Evolution's been talked about before here, but I forget--does the phone itself need the software upgrade too, or can legacy EDGE phones take advantage of the speed boosts?
"the knight and shining armor"
LOL
Yes, well, props for making an overused slang term funny by misquoting it.
Meanwhile, this IS a cool tech, however you have to remember that EDGE is already a 2G speed boost patch. 2G was originally just plain ol' GPRS, which maxed out at approximately the same speed of a dial up modem (60kbps). EDGE, which nearly quadrupled the data rate to up to 236kpbs (average is still around 100-150k, but max speeds of 230+ can and have been achieved on EDGE) is considered 2.5G by many in the field, so I wonder what that would make THIS? 2.75G?
Also, forgot to mention that when EDGE rolled out to replace GPRS, it was chosen as an in-between step to 3G since it was a simple (mostly software) upgrade on the tower end, so subscribers could benefit almost immediately by the roll out. Problem is, phones weren't really upgraded- they were replaced by new EDGE-compatible models.
I'm not certain if a radio-update would have made it possible to allow EDGE on older hardware, but I'm fairly certain that no one offered it.
So, its safe to say that the same thing would happen here- those of you on EDGE will probably need to turn in your old phones for 2.75G (or whatever they decide to call it this time). At that point, is it really worth not getting 3G already?
I'm sure he could care less about cliches he's only ever misheard and never tried to understand, for all intensive purposes.
GPRS is considered 2.5G, and EDGE "2.75G" or even 3G (at one point it was considered a 3G air interface by the ITU, but the way it's used is very 2.5Gish.) GPRS is 2.5G because it adds packet data to a 2G (circuit switched) system.