To: Rajala who wrote (78701 ) 8/17/2000 2:40:37 PM From: mightylakers Respond to IMO there is not much difference, theregister.co.uk Speaking in Helsinki at the end of last week Nokia executives warned that too much has been promised for GPRS and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution). GPRS is being positioned as a bridge to 3G systems, and has had data rates of in excess of 100kbps claimed for it. By Nokia, among others. EDGE is a little further down the line, is of particular interest to US TDMA operators, and offers even higher speeds. Or it did, anyway - Nokia has claimed "packet data user rates of up to 473kbps." Nokia says bit rates will be deliverable in multiples of 13kbps, and if you allow a maximum of three timeslots you get - with the apparent addition of 4kbps of secret sauce - 43kbps. That of course depends on the network operator being able to deliver you the maximum; we wouldn't be at all surprised if under some conditions you wound up getting 13kbps, dangerously close to the current GSM data rate of 9.6kbps. No doubt Nokia has a responsibility to go through its Web site and revise down all those recklessly large numbers itself, but Petri didn't mention that.The real point of GPRS, says Poyhonen, is the permanent connection - and he's not wrong. If you can achieve 43kbps permanently via wireless, or even just 20kbps, in most cases you won't necessarily notice the relatively low speed, because you're not demanding data in heavy bursts, as you would via a dial-up connection.
