AT&T Tweaking EDGE Network for iPhone; Treo to Benefit

Posted By: Kris Keilhack Thursday, June 7, 2007 8:52:46 AM

Gizmodo has just posted about some news that might offer a nice but unexpected throughput boost for GSM Treo users in the USA. While nowhere near as monumental as the previous announcement by Ericsson about EDGE Evolution, Gizmodo's reports states that AT&T has ordered an immediate fine-tuning of the existing EDGE network in advance of the Apple iPhone launch on June 29th.

Under the internal moniker of operation "Fine Tune", the effort is a last-minute measure designed to tweak the existing GSM EDGE network backend as much as possible with a minimum of 80kbps as the new baseline benchmark. Naturally, users of non-iPhone devices such as Treos can only stand to benefit from such a development.

While these sorts of incremental boosts might be scoffed at as the rollout of the "true" 3G HSDPA/UMTS network continues, any improvements to the aging EDGE network infrastructure will be welcome news indeed. If AT&T is succcessful in their efforts, they could somewhat mitigate the iPhone's lack of true 3G wireless, often cited as that device's primary drawback and a point certain to be targeted by the EVDO-wielding CDMA carriers like Sprint and Verizon.

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I doubt we'll all benefit

Unipalmeragain @ 6/7/2007 2:55:35 PM #

> Naturally, users of non-iPhone devices such as Treos can only stand to benefit from such a development.

Yeah, until the network completely bogs down from being over-subscribed.

Anyone know if PALM CDMA phones us Qualcomm chips

SeldomVisitor @ 6/7/2007 6:44:23 PM #

-- http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070607/qualcomm_broadcom_itc.html?.v=6

RE: Anyone know if PALM CDMA phones us Qualcomm chips

SeldomVisitor @ 6/8/2007 8:00:14 AM #

At the time I posted the original in this thread the article had words to the effect that the ban did not apply to phones already in country. But the article was updated around 10PM-ish to say the ban did not apply to phone MODELS already in country.

So this would affect PALM only for new models of phones.

Guess ya don't have to worry about THAT anytime soon!

...but what is the maximum?

rsc1000 @ 6/7/2007 10:32:21 PM #

>>Under the internal moniker of operation "Fine Tune", the effort is a last-minute measure designed to tweak the existing GSM EDGE network backend as much as possible with a minimum of 80kbps as the new baseline benchmark.

Let's think about this: they are "tweaking" the network so that they can achieve "a minimum of 80kbps". Do you think they are going to pull bandwidth out of thin air? Do you think they've had it 'lying around', and only decided to achieve full throttle now that the iPhone is here??

Here is what this means: they are going to throttle BACK the maximum speed so that they can guarantee 80kbps per user as a maximum. They are doing this because they know they will have a lot of iPhone users bogging their network down. So they have to shape the traffic so that nobody can get 'full-on' bandwidth that they could before. They will hide that with initial 'bursts' of higher bandwidth, followed by a dropoff whenever you do a download.

Seriously, why do you think that AT&T are in the middle of paying billions in a multi-year effort to upgrade to HSDPA? Easy: becuase they don't have any more bandwidth.

>>Naturally, users of non-iPhone devices such as Treos can only stand to benefit from such a development.

Sorry Ryan: not only do I believe this is not the case - it will be the opposite,

Or..... I am completely wrong and they do have a nice trick up their sleeves. Anything is possible.
I can't imagine what that would be though as the acrrier don't generally know jack abou there own network and they rely on the vendors (such as Ericsson) for 'off the shelf' solutions. They have a few weeks to do it so I can not imagine an across the board upgrade.

RE: ...but what is the maximum?

seamus z harper @ 6/12/2007 9:59:09 AM #

Check this out from Gizmodo:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/exclusive/iphone-data-to-be-boosted-by-atts-operation-fine-edge-265867.php

RE: ...but what is the maximum?

seamus z harper @ 6/12/2007 10:01:23 AM #

Ok, what didn't make it in that last post was that you need to read the article, not just the commentary here!

Kudos

cervezas @ 6/12/2007 11:39:33 AM #

This makes my day, actually. I like the lower power consumption and fewer dropped calls on EDGE more than I care about 3G bandwidth, and definitely like the fact that I can switch phones without asking at&t's permission, so I'm by and large a happy at&t customer. But 80+kbps will be a very welcome improvement. If they deliver, my hat's off to them.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

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