Clark,
<< Well, I agree that GSM basestations sold in the last year or so may well all be EDGE compatible. But those sold more than two years ago (i.e. the vast majority of GSM basestations) probably are not. >>
That is my impression.
As a consequence, EDGE is less of a no brainer for the 5 North American carriers that have only recently started their migration, as compared to the Europeans, Africans, and Asians that have older GSM implementations.
<< Obviously the reason this matters is that it strongly effects the price of migration. Updating software is always much cheaper than updating hardware. Hence my interest. >>
Obviously and hence mine as well, and I'm sure others.
It is very unclear at the moment to what degree carriers outside the Americas that have 3G licenses will postpone WCDMA or supplement with EDGE.
I recently saw a reasonably good article on the costs of implementing EDGE as an interim migration. If I find it again, I'll post. The costs were considerably less (by at least 50%) than was estimated a few years ago, but were still not insignificant, particularly when they have to be weighed against migrating directly to WCDMA.
<< But networking equipment typically is much more flexible (e.g. all of those firmware updates available in your modem) so my suspicion is that even 7 or 8 year old GSM basestations (i.e. probably a majority of GSM basestations) can be upgraded to GPRS via software with no hardware. >>
That could be, and that would account for the fact that 115 GPRS carriers are commercial with another 50 odd in process, and also account for the fact that there has not been, and will not be, a lot of revenue to be made by the infra providers upgrading carriers to GPRS
Best, |
