Cingular puts Indianapolis on EDGE

Claiming to have the first commercial service based on Enhanced Data-rate for Global Evolution (EDGE) technology, Cingular Wireless has launched the solution--potentially capable 170-kb/s transmission—in Indianapolis.

The carrier also is now selling the EDGE-capable Nokia 6200 phone in that city. Cingular expects to deploy EDGE, which is a simple software upgrade from General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) in a few more markets this year, and many more next year. Roaming in the Indianapolis market between existing GPRS and new EDGE coverage is expected to be relatively painless because EDGE is directly backward-compatible to GPRS, the carrier said.

Other carriers such as AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile USA, are also in the midst of EDGE deployment in several markets, but Cingular’s early edge in the EDGE race for commercial availability is something of a surprise.

An industry analyst who declined to be named said another carrier has considered announcing commercial availability of EDGE for a single market, but has delayed the announcement in favor of a later, more heavily promoted, multi-market unveiling.

However, Cingular CTO William Clift may have dropped a hint about the upcoming EDGE launch at the Supercomm trade show in early June when he said during a plenary panel, “Some people say corporate expectations for data bandwidth are a minimum of 56 kb/s. Other people would say it’s more like 100 kb/s. Either way, GPRS doesn’t get there, but EDGE does.” Average GPRS bandwidth is often quoted in the range of 36 kb/s, while average EDGE bandwidth is closer to 105 kb/s, with bursts up to 175 kb/s possible.