DownlinkDualCarrier
Latest
Nokia Siemens fires off first EDGE Evolution Downlink Dual Carrier trial
Hey, look at you, Nokia Siemens -- first to complete an EDGE Evolution Downlink Dual Carrier call, and now you're the first to set up a whole trial, too. With China's 3G push finally starting to really take root on all three major carriers, legacy GSM networks are still destined to be mega-important for a long time to come -- the country's huge, after all -- and so it makes good sense that the infrastructure firm teamed up with "one of China's leading operators" to deploy what it's calling a "successful" trial during which live streaming from YouTube and Sina were demonstrated in a live environment. EDGE Evolution ultimately promises downlink speeds of up to 600kbps with seamless transitions to and from 3G coverage, which should serve to significantly extend the life of GSM networks in areas where dropping the dough to go full 3G doesn't necessarily make sense. With 100 percent 3G saturation on AT&T and T-Mobile still many years away in the US, we wouldn't mind seeing some of this action in these parts, either.
EDGE looking spry in old age, completes first Downlink Dual Carrier call
3G's awesome, but for huge swaths of the GSM world, 2G is still -- and will continue to be -- a hugely important way to get data moved around the mobile interwebs. To help bridge the gap and keep the 2G folks from falling hopelessly behind, EDGE Evolution is the knight in shining armor, and Nokia Siemens is keeping the ball rolling by successfully testing Downlink Dual Carrier for the first time, a technology that doubles legacy EDGE speeds to a max of 592kbps on the downlink. Unlike UMTS and HSPA solutions, Downlink Dual Carrier promises to be a software-only solution, which means it should theoretically be quick, easy, and cheap for carriers to deploy en masse. And hey, as long as AT&T and T-Mobile have less than 100 percent 3G coverage -- which as far as we can tell is still years away -- we'll take whatever little boost we can get.[Via MobileTechNews]
