GSM Operators and Vendors on Target with Commercialization of EDGE

GSM operators and vendors at the EDGE Operators' Forum (EOF) in New Orleans provided timely advice regarding the progress of EDGE and its current commercialization to an important audience of rural, regional, and international operators representing the Americas, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.

Inset is Alan Hadden, President of the GSA who is quoted below.

Key points presented:

Deployment: EDGE is here and ready for the market. EDGE will be deployed by fourteen operators representing over 84 million subscribers in nine countries throughout the Americas, with the first commercial launches beginning the 2nd half of 2003. A growing number of operators in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe have been actively evaluating EDGE as a complementary deployment with UMTS. One vendor reports over fifteen trials currently underway.

Market readiness: GSM operators are already seeing the uptake of messaging, a good precursor to high-speed wireless data services. Worldwide, there were an estimated 430 billion mobile messages sent in 2002 with GSM operators accounting for the largest market share.

Spectral efficiency: EDGE is the most spectrally efficient 3G radio access technology up to 100 Kbps while UMTS offers the best spectral efficiency for data rates higher than 100 Kbps, thus provide a fully complementary network plan. EDGE may be deployed within an operator's existing spectrum and does not require a new 3G license.
Terminals: All EDGE devices will support GSM/GPRS and work on multiple spectrum bands including variations of 800/900/1800/1900 MHz. The cost of including EDGE capabilities within a device is considered negligible and industry consensus is that EDGE will be a standard feature in all new GPRS terminals from the end of 2003. Multiple vendors have already made commercial announcements regarding devices and PC-cards.

Infrastructure: There are hundreds of thousands of EDGE-capable GSM base stations being deployed today, that require relatively simple software and hardware upgrades and thereby provide the lowest total lifetime cost of network ownership for operators. Vendors providing infrastructure include Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks, and Siemens.

Cost to upgrade: Practical experience shows that the cost to upgrade to EDGE from GSM/GPRS is about $1-$2 per POP, in addition delivering three times the data capacity.

Global availability: EDGE will be globally available for operators by 2H 2003 in all primary spectrum bands with commitments in place by terminal and infrastructure vendors.
Chris Pearson, Executive Vice President of 3G Americas, remarked to press and analysts at an EDGE Operators' Forum briefing during CTIA, "Today, we are showcasing the outstanding progress of EDGE: from AT&T Wireless becoming the first operator to announce deployment of EDGE in 2000, followed by Rogers, Cingular, T-Mobile, Telcel, and another nine operators in the Americas to date; AT&T Wireless completing the first EDGE call with multiple vendors in 2001; the massive amounts of infrastructure shipped by multiple vendors since 2002; operators nearing completion of their EDGE network upgrades; the announcements of commercial EDGE devices by multiple vendors; to the commercial deployments of EDGE expected in the second half of 2003."

Alan Hadden, President of the GSA, commented, "We have indicated that EDGE is not just an Americas' technology and confirm that EDGE is being deployed on a global basis in all major continents." He continued, "Operators with commitments to EDGE represent about 100 million subscribers. They have the advantages of both the economies of scale with GSM/GPRS and the interoperability of EDGE with UMTS (WCDMA) that will be assured through the standards work of the 3GPP. This translates into a world of 3G services for GSM customers."

In the past year, GSM has become the fastest growing wireless technology in the Americas, registering a 53% growth from year-end 2001 to year-end 2002, according to the EMC World Cellular Database. Latin America has seen numerous new GSM deployments; in Brazil, a total of 1.7 million new subscribers were added from June 2002 to the end of the year with over 69% of customers choosing the GSM technology (23% selected TDMA and 8% choose CDMA).

Worldwide, EMC reports that GSM carriers added some 165 million new subscribers in 2002, over 30 million more than the total number of current CDMA subscribers of about 133 million.

This Press Release Sponsored by AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES

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