Why Cingular’s EDGE Network is Amazing

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

I have seen the future, or at least the first glimpse a truly always online experience. It’s called the EDGE Network from Cingular Wireless. So let me explain why it has rocked my world.

I fly about 120,000 miles a year and use a Blackberry and laptop to communicate. In airports I get a day pass from T-Mobile if I have to do more than email back short replies and access the web, and that runs about $9.00 a day. In hotels I use WiFi or whatever high speed option is available and that adds another $12 - $15 a day to my hotel bill. All this adds up, but nothing beats WiFi and avoiding the pain and agony of dial up.

But when I got my new laptop - the Sony Vaio T350P (more on that later) it came with an integrated EDGE card and a 30 day trial period. Previous attempts to do cellular high speed were not much better than dial up and certainly expensive and cumbersome, but with 30 days free and no add-in card needed, I signed up and decided to give Edge a spin.

Fast forward and I am actually writing this in a cab in Canada. My connection speed is about 212Kbps in what they call a burst mode, which sounds slow, but it is more than fine for pulling up websites, doing email and basically using my computer in a car in the middle of nowhere.

Quick facts:
Fastest National Wireless Data Network The Cingular EDGE network delivers speeds nearly twice as fast as any other national wireless data network.
-Average download speeds of 70 - 135 kilobits per second (Kbps)
-Burst speeds up to 200 Kbps
-More than three times the speed of GPRS
-Nearly twice the speed of CDMA 1xRTT

Mobile Access Around the World
The EDGE network offers coverage in:
-Over 13,000 U.S. cities and towns
-More than 39,000 miles of U.S. highways
-A population of nearly 253 million
-International, EDGE and GPRS roaming is available in more than 80 countries.
Source: Cingular

Bottom line: $79 a month is pricey, but if you travel a lot and need more than email and do the math on day passes and high speed room charges and so on, the EDGE is pretty cutting edge. I have finally seen a day where we move beyond hotspots and day passes and simply have online access when we want it wherever we want it. To some, that may make you shriek in horror. To others like myself, I can say it’s about time!