Some more research on EDGE....straight from Nokia.
As I said before, I think the key unanswered question for EDGE is the amount of capex that will be required for European carriers to upgrade to EDGE. I think some of Nokia's press releases provide some broad answers.
This is from Nokia's announcement of the first commercial EDGE deliviries to AWE and Cingular (Jan. 02).
press.nokia.com
Since 1999, Nokia has been delivering EDGE-capable UltraSite EDGE and MetroSite EDGE base stations. Adding EDGE to these base stations requires only a simple upgrade, and in the case of 800 MHz and 1900 MHz networks, typically only a software upgrade is needed.
Extrapolating from this statement, it seems pretty clear (or at least as clear as any PR is going to get), that 900 MHz and 1800 MHz networks are likely to require more than a software upgrade. This hardware upgrade is still considered "simple". Pre-99 basestations would seem to require more extensive replacements of hardware (if not the entire basestation).
This is Nokia's announcement of initial shipments of the Nokia UltraSite and MetroSite basestations. This is from September '99.
press.nokia.com
Nokia's high-capacity EDGE solution builds on its best-in-class GSM solutions, including the new Nokia UltraSite and Nokia MetroSite Capacity Solution, both of which are easily upgradeable to EDGE.
It would seem that all pre-Sep. '99 basestations that were shipped are NOT EDGE capable.
The question then shifts to how many GSM basestations were shipped prior to Sep. '99. I had trouble finding any firm numbers for this but using total subs is probably a decent proxy. GSM had 258 million subscribers at the end of '99 vs 704.5 million at the end of the first half '02.
gsmworld.com
If using subs as a proxy is accurate, about 37% of the total GSM basestations are not EDGE capable.
It gets worse for European carriers. They likely had a much higher percentage of the total number of GSM basestations at the end of '99. On top of that, the places that were the most built-out (cities) are precisely the places that would be most likely to need the added data capacity that EDGE provides. Just a guess....but the percentage of non-EDGE basestations probably tops 60% in the cities for European carriers.
At the very least, these pre-'99 basestations arent going to be "simple" to upgrade, at worst, they will need to be replaced entirely. Unless the upgrade to GPRS involved extensive hardware changes in the RAN (so they are already EDGE capable), it is hard to see how EDGE is going to be a cheap upgrade for European carriers.
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