Rejoice all ye iPhone users who have been bitching about being stuck with EDGE when out of Wi-Fi range! Nokia Siemens Networks has figured out how to make EDGE faster as part of what they call EDGE Evolution improvements.

Nokia Siemens announced the launch of their downlink Dual Carrier EDGE software solution that doubles EDGE data speeds of up to 592 kbps. That might not sound a lot to you folks with Megabit lines at home, but for a non-3G enable phone, that’s pretty impressive.

The good news? Oh, there is plenty. First, Nokia Siemens says no hardware upgrade is needed for the networks. It’s all in the software and existing EDGE-compliant mobile phones will also benefit from just a firmware upgrade. The latter might just apply to Class 2 EDGE users, though, because the earlier EDGE class might not see an improvement.

Backtracking a bit, what is EDGE Evolution? Simply put, it’s improving upon EDGE speeds by reducing latency , increasing bit rates as well as signal quality. Nokia Siemens Networks has been incorporating it into their GSM/EDGE portfolio.

The bad news? The software upgrade will only be available from Q3 2008 onwards, so you speed junkies might have to wait a bit. Nokia Siemens also claims to have EGPRS 2 in the pipeline which promises downlink speeds of up to 1.2 Mbps and uplink to 473 kbps, quadrupling EDGE’s current capabilities.

“By 2015, we expect to live in a broadband-IP world with five billion people ‘always on’ and therefore Nokia Siemens Networks is committed to protecting customer investments and continue to implement leading EDGE technology. Dual Carrier software upgrade is an easy and extremely cost efficient step to bring broadband user experience to GSM/EDGE networks”, says Ari Lehtoranta, Head of Radio Access Business Unit, Nokia Siemens Networks.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 1:03 pm under Cell phones.

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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