Following yesterday’s dissection of the Reality Distortion Field, UK edition, it would appear that El Jobso is rubbing off on operators selling the iPhone. It was confirmed today that T-Mobile would offer the device in Germany, and the company’s press release did a most excellent job of trying to cover up the iPhone’s shortcomings in the “fast mobile data” category.
Like O2 in the UK, T-Mobile says it will spend a bunch of money deploying EDGE across its network, despite its huge investment in 3G and its current rollout of 7.2 Mbps HSDPA. Nevertheless, it’s forced to try and defend El Jobso’s skewed worldview about 3G, battery life and Wi-Fi, so it trots out this gem:
By the end of 2007, T-Mobile will be the only network operator in Germany to offer EDGE throughout its entire GSM network. EDGE accelerates the mobile data transfer rate to over 220 Kilobits per second, which makes it almost four times as fast as ISDN in fixed-line networks.
Four times as fast as ISDN? Seriously? The company’s launching a leading-edge HSDPA network, yet thanks to Apple’s technical indifference or incompetence, they’re forced to act like being faster than dialup is something wonderful. No word on whether T-Mobile’s CEO is now wearing black turtlenecks as well.
This is putting credibilty to the limits as the theoretical data rate of 220 KBS for EDGE assumes that you re the only person using the cell and that there is no noise. Most real life tests i have seen data on have peaked around 60 kbs at best.
But it’s faster than dialup! Isn’t that awesome?!
Yes, it’s much better than the N95 3G + pathetic battery life + slow page rendering + terrible browser experience.
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The figure of 7.2 Mbps with HSDPA is also kind of misleading. Again as per Paul’s comments on EDGE thats optimal conditions i.e. just you in the cell standing next to the base station. But interestingly it also only refers to the speed between your handset and the base station. Operator backhaul from the base station to the core network is likely to be less than that so in reality its all a bunch of pretty meaningless numbers…….
Don’t you love marketing