The researchers over at Nokia Siemens have been busy trying to breathe life once more to EDGE, by utilizing a Dual Carrier EDGE software solution that will boast EDGE download speeds to 592 kbps practically becoming EDGE Evolution sometime in Q3 2008, and plan another upgrade that will boost EDGE speeds to a somewhat respectable 1.2 Mbps and upload of 473 kbps. There was no word in the press release if current handsets in the market can use these upgrades as it is, but most likely they will require a firmware upgrade to utilize the speed increases. For most of these phones, by the time they get FW upgrades we will be half-way done getting 4G. Besides, EDGE is big mainly on this side of the pond. In Europe and Asia they are mainly utilizing 3G and 3.5 cellular data. Another issue is to see if they will implement simultaneous voice and data on EDGE Evolution or not. For now we will have to wait and see how these upgrades will play out.
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