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05-05-2011, 10:31
From my experience EDGE-cells are often heavily congested in Western markets, where smartphone penetration is high. While I have constantly had >200 KBit/s in Bulgaria (M-Tel), I rarely see rates more than 100 KBit/s here in Germany.
The total capacity of an EDGE-cell is much smaller than on 3G, so fewer users can congest a cell. Also operators evade to sacrifice voice channels for data on their GSM networks, as voice calls provide more revenue than data, so there's few scope for capacity upgrades.
So when comparing EDGE with 3G/UMTS/HSPA you should also consider the total capacity per cell, which is much higher on 3G.
terminals: Samsung: Galaxy S5 DuoS (G900FD); BLU: Win HD LTE; Nokia: 1200; Asus: Fonepad 7 ME372CG; Huawei data: E3372, Vodafone R201, K3765, E1762;
postpaid: O2 on Business XL; prepaid: DE: Aldi Talk, Lidl; UK: 3; BG: MTel, vivacom; RU: MTS; RS: MTS; UAE: du Tourist SIM; INT'L: toggle mobile
VoIP: sipgate.de (German DID); sipgate.co.uk (British DID); ukddi.com (British DID); sipcall.ch (Swiss DID); megafon.bg (Bulgarian DID); InterVoip.com
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