T-Mobile USA offers EDGE across 90% of GRPS network @ Dave’s iPAQ
*sigh* It’s so frustrating being a data-loving T-Mobile customer sometimes. I’m planning a migration to Verizon because of their speedy EVDO wireless data access (~1.5Mbps). I have reservations, because other than the slow GPRS data (~50Kbps) and their lax attitude toward providing anything better before 2007, I’ve been quite happy with T-Mobile.
So here comes news, out of the blue, that they’ve launched higher speed EDGE access (~120Kbps) across 90% of their GPRS network. EDGE is basically a speed boost to the existing GPRS network. Theoretically, all you need is an EDGE-capable device, like a Treo 650, HP iPAQ 6500, Motorola “Q”, etc. and if you already have GPRS access, like I do, you’re set.
If they had told me that this was coming, it might have prevented me from abandoning them for Verizon. Maybe. EDGE is nowhere near as fast as EVDO, but staying with T-Mobile and GSM/GPRS/EDGE would give me a much greater choice of devices (mentioned above) and the ease of switching from one device to another simply by moving a SIM card.
The last I had heard, T-Mobile wasn’t planning on rolling out any speed upgrades to its GPRS network until 2007, at the earliest. Sticking with them would have been like sticking with dial-up internet access when high speed broadband access was available. Madness, in other words. 
I’m still going to switch to EVDO. This speed boost is too little, too late. You had your chance to keep me, T-Mobile, and you lost it.
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A few things to consider (from someone who moved from Cingular -> Verizon and back):
1. Voice calls will be automatically forwarded to voicemail if you are on an active data session (not like how GPRS works, unfortunately).
2. EV-DO is very nice… It would be good if voice would work on it (when you end a data session or make a phone call, you get dropped to the 1X network, which results in many dropped calls in my area (i.e., I get 4 bars on an i730 with EVDO and 0-1 while on 1X).
Some excellent comments in the previous post regarding no voice over EVDO. Allow me to add another point regarding EDGE that may help you stay with TMobile…
Ever notice how most Web sites download slowly over the 54 Mbps 802.11g/a technologies? Thank the lack of responsiveness of the target URL, the transport technology used by the target URL server (i.e. 384k DSL vs. 10 Mbps cable, etc.), and the traffic hitting the target URL server.
Data transfer speed is not just about your link to the Web, it’s about both directions of the link at both ends. WIth EVDO, you are essentially buying a data-only link (deployed, by the way, in direct competitiion for operating frequencies with the same carrier’s voice services). With EDGE, both voice and data are served on the same technology, ensuring broad coverage and minimal competition with voice services.
As 1x vs EDGE data rates go, a study in SF done by the Deutsche Bank wireless analyst group showed roughly 75-100 kbps download data rates for each. You can argue that EDGE handset uplink is still slower than 1x (an artifact of how GSM works vs. CDMA), but that will change over the next two years.
All in all, be careful about chasing mobile data rates as your primary point for making a carrier decision. All networks are not equal, all technologies are not equal. An operator’s primary benefits to customers are quality of coverage and capacity, availability of a wide range of handsets, and data services. You’ll waste a lot of money in termination fees chasing data rate at this point in the history of mobie communications.
Yep, I can confirm that with a Treo 650 on T-Mobile in Portland, I am getting some pretty fast speeds. Using it as the modem for my laptop, several different broadband speed-check sites clocked me on average at 125K. It’s a far cry from 1.2M, but it sure does beat what I had before (which I never measured, but seemed not too different from a 28.8 modem.)
Right now, I type this from laptop -> Bluetooth -> Treo -> EDGE.
hi, i just signed up with tmobiles 29.95 / mo GPRS service. i have an edge enabled motorola v360 and i am very happy. before i was using the cell phone as a modem getting only 9.6kbits voice connection for my data. was like a really bad 14.4 connection from back in the win3.1 days in 94. now i did a test on dslreports website and b elow are the results. in summary it shows me at 149 down and 51 up. that is around 3 times a normal 56k modem. it feels like about 2-3 times the speed of one and i also took some traceroutes from nwtools.com of which i will post after the dslreports. the only thing that puzzles me is the fact that all hops after hop 11 times out. hop 11 is the first tmobile owned network host/ip to show in the trace. the rest is backbone to the nwtools provider:
dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-09-04 22:36:59 EST:
149 / 51
Your download speed : 149 kbps or 18.6 KB/sec.
Your upload speed : 51 kbps or 6.4 KB/sec.
TraceRoute to 208.54.14.73 [m490e36d0.tmodns.net]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 0 0 0 66.98.244.1 gphou-66-98-244-1.ev1.net
2 0 0 0 66.98.241.16 gphou-66-98-241-16.ev1.net
3 1 1 1 38.99.206.173 -
4 1 1 1 38.112.35.237 g4-0-0.core01.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com
5 15 15 15 66.28.4.106 p13-0.core01.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com
6 26 26 26 66.28.4.29 p5-0.core01.den01.atlas.cogentco.com
7 47 47 47 66.28.4.197 p6-0.core01.smf01.atlas.cogentco.com
8 59 59 59 154.54.3.126 p2-0.core01.pdx01.atlas.cogentco.com
9 62 62 62 154.54.3.133 p4-0.core01.sea01.atlas.cogentco.com
10 68 68 68 154.54.12.174 gblx.sea01.atlas.cogentco.com
11 65 65 66 207.138.128.122 t-mobile-usa-voicestream-wireless.so-2-0-3.ar2.sea1.gblx.net
12 Timed out Timed out Timed out -
13 Timed out Timed out Timed out -
14 Timed out Timed out Timed out -
15 Timed out Timed out Timed out -
i would feel better knowing why the last 4 hops/hosts time out. and i would not mind trying to tweak up the internet session speeds a little more. but this is probably the best i will see on a edge/gprs connection for the next year till the next upgrade on tmobile’s network takes place… (hopefully)
thanks to my loving wife who signed my line up for the gprs. xoxo
Sean, I’d love to know your secret to getting 125kbps down using the v360 as a modem to your notebook/desktop computer. I”m connected to the V360 via a USB2 port and have have both the Moto phone tools and the T-mobile connection manager. My data rates are ~60kbs down and up using speakeasy.net/SpeedTest.
Even, the T-Mobile connection manager (version 1.7) reports in the status info that the network is GPRS (doesn’t report EDGE), but then I don’t really know if it really would.
Is there any tricks to setting up the dial-up login that enables the better speeds? Right now I’m using the extra init command of
AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”internet2.voicestream.com”
and my dial-up login number as *99#. I’ve seen the connection manager also dial into *99***1# as well.
Does any of this make a difference?
hi bob johnson, sorry i not msgd you back. i just found this post while googling my name.
more than likely you already figured it out or moved onto something even better. but incase you have not u can contact me directly at theresmoretolifethantv@yahoo.com and i can send u a session config.
however there are other things that would obviously affect the rates at which you are getting. signal strength being one of them and without the edge feature being enabled or active you wont see the greater speeds at which your phone is capable.
note that i also edited my phone to display more engineer like information. for instance, after i logout of the built in yahoo aim or icq apps it tells me total bytes transfered. it also displays a E= like symbol to represent EDGE ACTIVE. I even edited some of the firmware to remove some common bugs in the Motorola code which in earlier triplex models like v### model phones especially the v3xx series ones would render text messenger inoperable.
having the v360 with the usb mini b port has been a blessing. the v330 didnt come with one and i was not about to buy a special data cable at 60 bucks to make it work right again so instead just got the v360.
anyone getting a new phone i highly suggest making sure it comes with both a usb mini b connection and a micro SD memory expansion slot.
ciao 4 now
sean