Cingular eases into GPRS

Cingular Wireless finally made it official. With little fanfare, the nation's second largest carrier declared last week it would offer general packet radio service (GPRS) by the end of the year.

But the announcement was not the monumental decision the industry was bracing for. Instead of following fellow TDMA carrier AT&T Wireless's lead in declaring it would trash its current technology and follow the GSM migration path, Cingular simply said it would deploy GPRS backbones over its current GSM networks on the West Coast and southeastern seaboard.

As for the rest of the carrier's far-flung networks, their status is still undetermined, and Cingular still is being cagey about what it will do as the rest of the industry makes the gradual — and, in some cases, painful — shift to high-speed data services.

Cingular isn't procrastinating or being secretive; it is simply being careful, according to Kris Rinne, Cingular's vice president for technology and product realization.

“We see GSM and TDMA coming together, and we're continuing to analyze the situation,” Rinne said. “The question is ‘Do we really need to do an interim step before we begin deploying high-speed data services?’”

For now, the company's answer is ‘no.’ Cingular is keeping its original plans to deploy GPRS over GSM networks in California, Washington, Nevada, the Carolinas, eastern Tennessee and coastal Georgia. It plans to deploy Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution (EDGE) over the TDMA and GSM footprints when the infrastructure becomes available and demand for high-speed services is ripe.

Meanwhile, Cingular plans to offer its current TDMA 2G data services and Mobitex infrastructure to keep wireless data stabilized until the EDGE transplant arrives.

Watch an exclusive video interview with Bob Egan of the Gartner Group

That strategy could be disastrous for the wireless carrier, which was created last year as a joint venture of SBC Communications' and BellSouth's wireless assets, according to Bob Egan, wireless research director for Gartner.

EDGE won't be ready for commercial deployment for another 24 months. Meanwhile Cingular's competitors will be flipping the ‘on’ button on their GPRS and cdma2000 networks by the end of year, putting Cingular at least a year behind in offering high-speed data services to its TDMA customers — if EDGE equipment is ready to deploy, Egan said.

“There is a lot of disillusionment about EDGE in Europe, and it won't be rolled out in the huge quantities we were expecting last year,” Egan said. “That means Cingular won't get the advantage of economies of scale from mass deployments. It's going to be very, very expensive.”

Even if Cingular successfully rolls out EDGE and remains competitive in the data game, it faces the possibility that GSM carriers worldwide will dump EDGE and build out their W-CDMA networks, offering data speeds and spectral efficiency far in excess of any EDGE solution. Either way, Cingular gets the shaft, Egan said.

But jumping on the global bandwagon and converting to GSM is easier said than done.

Rinne noted that AT&T Wireless' recent marriage to GSM didn't get the benefit of a honeymoon. AT&T has started the expensive process of deploying GSM-GPRS base stations alongside its TDMA base stations — a transition that can't take place overnight.

Handsets supporting multiple standards — as well as cellular and PCS frequencies — would add to the expense on the terminal side. And Cingular knows the complexities of rolling out and operating a GSM network, because it has operated Pacific Bell's GSM footprint for years, Rinne said.

“We're a little farther along on the learning curve than AT&T,” Rinne said.

The explanations of cost and logistics, however, do not explain the whole story of why Cingular may be reluctant to make the switch to GSM. In fact, the problems AT&T is encountering may seem small compared with those Cingular would encounter if it follows its competitor's lead, Egan said.

“Cingular, more than any other carrier in the U.S., is between a rock and a hard place simply because of their patchwork quilt of a network,” Egan said.