<...T and the GSM crowd who will be/are pouring billions into these systems don't see. It just doesn't make sense that they will build these multi billion dollar systems and then turn on the switch and say OH WELL that didn't work now what??>
Irwin Jacobs said EDGE is not a good way of handling data. Lars Ramqvist said when customers want CDMA "We will deny them their request". Ericy said CDMA could not work effectively. I prefer to believe the technical and marketing decisions and statements by Irwin Jacobs over the vapourwear world of naked King Ericy and klan. Nokia claims that EDGE will be ready to rumble next year.
The spectrum and network capacity gobbling by EDGE will be horrendous. It's sloth will be unacceptable. The costs will be extorquerationate. HDR by comparison will be fast, cheap and effective. Some time ago CDMA zoomed past the critical mass of competitive advantage and every day the CDMA advantage will grow and do so at a faster rate.
The GSM world needs to milk their legacy GSM networks for all they are worth. GPRS seems likely to be a successful intermediary for perhaps 2 or 3 years at most. Then the WWeb world which will operate best on HDR and cdma2000 will put great pressure on GSM systems which will simply not cope.
ATT hasn't poured billions into EDGE and I doubt we will see that. Maybe GPRS makes sense and judging from orders received, it obviously does for a year or three.
Service providers are going to have to provide high speed, cheap, always on, WWeb services. Some voice only networks will probably survive [maybe one or two service providers in each area], but I guess eventually they'll succumb to the Web.
A year of extra life for GSM is worth untold billions to Nokia, Ericy and the GSM gang. Spending a billion or three on EDGE [even if there is not much substance to it] to get people to hold off on CDMA conversion, is a good idea. But Vodafone/AirTouch/Mannesman will be wanting to leverage their huge asset pretty quickly and that will be towards a universal service, with roaming anywhere in it - meaning CDMA and HDR.
GPRS seems to provide a reasonable interim solution right now for the GSM world. EDGE seems more a con-job, or at best, wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, it's nice to see Telecom New Zealand finally announce their CDMA supplier, Lucent. Poor Ericy! If they hadn't 'denied that request', maybe they would have got the business.
In summary, I mostly believe Irwin Jacobs when he says EDGE is not a good solution. Then I read between the lines and wonder who benefits from what. I see a desperate scramble in the GSM world. The CDMA world has a multitude of competitors. The GSM world is protected with huge IPR costs [though people keep moaning about derisory CDMA royalties] and Nokia and Ericy have a BIG GSM market share - they want that to remain as long as possible. When CDMA is ruling the aether, Nokia and Ericy will be just another couple of also-rans.
Mqurice |
