Nokia Siemens Announces Dual Carrier EDGE Solution

The leading global enabler of communications services, Nokia Siemens Networks has announced the launch of its downlink Dual Carrier EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Environment) software solution, which able to double the data speeds on existing EDGE-capable GSM networks up to 592 kbps, aiming to enable a mobile broadband experience.

“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,” said Ari Lehtoranta, Head of Radio Access Business Unit, Nokia Siemens Networks. “Dual Carrier software upgrade is an easy and extremely cost efficient step to bring broadband user experience to GSM/EDGE networks”.

According to Nokia Siemens Networks, “Dual Carrier EDGE solution, which will be available as a software upgrade from Q3 2008 onwards is the first step in evolving EDGE. As a strong innovator of EDGE Evolution, Nokia Siemens Networks already has additional plans to introduce in its networks the next substantial step, the so called EGPRS 2, to further boost end user experience in up- and downlink performance. This will result in downlink speeds of up to 1.2 Mbps and will double uplink speed to up to 473 kbps, thus quadrupling the capabilities of EDGE today. EDGE Evolution is based on the 3GPP release 7 standard.”