[Pete6]

I went to the UK last weekend. I set up with Swisscom (my carrier) so that I would have emails and data at only slightly ripoff rates and off I went.

In London I had no EDGE service. I only got GPRS. Everything still worked fine. Emails and web access worked great but slowly. I was wondering, is EDGE available in London or, is this a function of roaming?

As soon as I got back home to Switzerland and on to Swisscom, EDGE came right back up.

Thanks - Pete

[Berryman]

Yes, you would have thought that London would have extensive EDGE coverage, it does'nt. On which UK carrier were you roaming on?

From my experence you can only obtain patchy EDGE coverage in central London via Orange and O2 - but not from Vodafone or T-Mobile.
In any case EDGE was only a small stepping stone upwards from GPRS, before HSDPA and HSUPA networks were completed. On this front London/the UK is doing pretty well. By the end of this year nearly the entire UK will have 3G coverage.

[Pete6]

I was on Vodafone which is a partner network to Swisscom.

I was not in central London. I was out in the suburbs.

I was not criticising, I was only interested.

You are right EDGE is but a step on the way.

Thanks for your answer.

Pete

[sniffs]

I thought Vodafone was CDMA?

[Pete6]

Well it said GPRS and it worked. Most of Europe is still GSM.

[Berryman]

Well it said GPRS and it worked. Most of Europe is still GSM.

All of Europe is on GSM/and will remain so, (thankfully) and Vodafone's 250 million plus subscribers worldwide are all on GSM based networks.

[jyurick]

Last year when in London (Central admittedly) I was getting EDGE coverage with either O2 or Orange depending on which way I was pointed...

[Pete6]

All of Europe is on GSM/and will remain so, (thankfully) and Vodafone's 250 million plus subscribers worldwide are all on GSM based networks.

I thought that the ITU had sanctioned a few CDMA networks? That was why I said what I did.

[sniffs]

All of Europe is on GSM/and will remain so, (thankfully) and Vodafone's 250 million plus subscribers worldwide are all on GSM based networks.

Why would Verizon, an American CDMA carrier, partner with Vodafone, a European GSM carrier?

I can see if Vodafone was CDMA.. but GSM? that's competing technology..

Solely for the 8830WE?

[Berryman]

Why would Verizon, an American CDMA carrier, partner with Vodafone, a European GSM carrier?

I can see if Vodafone was CDMA.. but GSM? that's competing technology..

Solely for the 8830WE?

-------------------------------
It has a great deal to do with the future LTE based technology. Verizon as well as Vodafone will use LTE for their 4G networks. Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the GSM Association's 4G technology. This choice over other technology reflects Vodafone's long term commitment to Verizon and vice-versa

The selection of LTE allows Verizon and Vodafone to adopt a future, common access platform for global scale and compatibility with existing technologies of both companies. Verizon and Vodafone have a coordinated trial plan for LTE that began this year, with suppliers to include Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia-Siemens and Nortel.

Though Verizon owns and offers network access in more than 150 countries, once the user is outside of the United States, Verizon can only support wireless roaming onto other networks using dual-mode phones. This has been a considerable disadvantage, even though Vodafone, a 45% investor in Verizon Wireless, is strong in world markets. LTE, which isn't expected to launch until late 2009 or early 2010, will unify the two networks both at the radio and core network layers and enable greater purchasing power for handsets and infrastructure. In its launch, Verizon expects LTE will enable 3 to 10 Mbps downlink and 1.5 to 3 Mbps uplink.

Even though the decision to use LTE is a positive move for Verizon and will increase the capability for global roaming, it is yet another technology announcement focused on speed rather than on network quality and coverage. Though Verizon doesn't anticipate migrating subscribers or spectrum off of cdma2000 until 2015, Gartner is sure that the company will re-evaluate where it invests its network dollars as LTE ramps up in the next few years.

This move does not bode well for providers based on CDMA that were anticipating migrating to Ultra Mobile Broadband which is likely not to become commercially available now. Sprint has already placed its bet on WiMAX, but might now reconsider its position, or plan a migration from CDMA to LTE.

[Pete6]

Dunno exactly but if I had to take a guess then I'd say that it was about having a foot in a market and, of course, money.

GSM came before CDMA and Europe adopted it. Later CDMA came along and the US which was slower on the uptake than Europe for DIGITAL mobile, or cell phones, adopted that.

I do not really see the two technologies as competeing. Rather they are steps along the path. First there were analog mobiles. Remember those housbricks and the Motorolas with pull out antennas? Then GSM and then CDMA.

There are some GSM networks in the US and either very few or no CDMA networks in Europe. I may have been compeltely wrong (not for the first time...) in saying that there are some CDMA networks in Europe. I can't find out until Monday.

I do not know enough to say which system is superior. I do know that once you have spent many millions of whatever currency on network hardware across roughly the same population base as the US then it is very difficult to change it.

I do know that wherever I have been in Western Europe - which is pretty much everywhere - I have had some sort of coverage - except in the back of the local supermarket near my Mum's house in South London.