Now only somewhat annoyingly slow...
Nokia Siemens has unveiled their downlink Dual Carrier EDGE software solution, which should more than double the downstream capacity of EDGE wireless broadband networks to 592kbps during the second half of this year. Thought EDGE was dead because AT&T is moving on to HSDPA and ultimately LTE wireless broadband? Nokia Siemens apparently begs to differ, and claims the old gal has some life in her yet:
As a strong innovator of EDGE Evolution, Nokia Siemens Networks already has additional plans to introduce in its networks the next substantial step, the so called EGPRS 2, to further boost end user experience in up- and downlink performance. This will result in downlink speeds of up to 1.2 Mbps and will double uplink speed to up to 473 kbps, thus quadrupling the capabilities of EDGE today. EDGE Evolution is based on the 3GPP release 7 standard.
So, should AT&T decide to upgrade the existing EDGE network, those first generation iPhone users will see slightly peppier connectivity. However, it initially still won't technically constitute broadband according to the FCC's
new definitions, and it obviously won't match second generation iPhone (expected
mid-year) HSDPA connectivity. But, EDGE won't suck quite so badly, which we suppose is something.
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