ronho,
<< Why would NOK include this very unfavorable slide in their recent presentation if it did not contain some truth? >>
The short answer is EDGE (and WCDMA).
The longer answer is contained in Dr. J. T. Bergqvist's presentation titled "GSM Evolution to 3G" in which he discusses the "Mobile Data Imperative" made yesterday at Capital Market Days in NYC.
If you haven't listened to it yet, you might want to. It is available for replay at the Nokia site.
As a practical matter GPRS is a capacity hog, pure and simple. As a bearer service for WAP 2 and possibly MMS it is probably perfectly adequate. For anything else it is not.
Peter Rysavy who knows GPRS, its strengths and weaknesses, about as well as anyone I know of, has this to say about GPRS:
"Users can consider GPRS for any IP-based application, so long as the application isn't too bandwidth-hungry. Nevertheless, GPRS carriers are looking to GPRS as a key enabling technology for WAP because GPRS offers the perfect always-on, always-connected transport for WAP. Carriers are interested in WAP for another reason. GPRS could quickly become a victim of its own success if too many people use it for large downloads. Since users contend for a limited number of GPRS radio channels, throughput will go down with an increasing number of active users. WAP addresses this issue by a text orientation and small screens, thus minimizing the network's load. Carriers are likely to push WAP over GPRS vs. general-purpose networking."
rysavy.com
EDGE changes the paradigm (for carriers who have no license for 3G or insufficient spectrum for same) and so does multi-radio EDGE/WCDMA (for carriers that do).
- Eric - |
