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AT&T (Cingular), the exclusive provider of the iPhone in the U.S. for the next five years, is the only GSM carrier in this country to sport a 3G (UTMS/HSPDA) network. And yet, Apple chose to limit the first iPhone model to 2.5G cellular-wireless technology for data services; a move many find perplexing, considering nearly everything else about the device is cutting-edge.

To (sort of) make up for this, it is being reported AT&T is in the process of fine-tuning its 2.5G EDGE network. The plan with ‘Operation Fine Edge’ is to boost minimum data transfer speeds from 40kbps to 80kbps. How? Beefing up the backend by increasing the number of T-1 lines at the carrier's poorest performing cellular towers.

Sure, it is still a long way from 3G—AT&T's 3G network averages between 400 and 700kbps—but any improvement should be welcome to iPhone users.

Then again, it's kind of hard to believe AT&T is the position of digging up every kilobyte it can for a smartphone that's going to cost customers $499 or $599, especially when it has the infrastructure to offer so much more.

And Apple says the iPhone is supposed to deliver a real Internet experience, not the “baby Internet” it asserts is offered up by other smartphones. But wouldn't it be nice if the iPhone could do so at cellular-broadband speeds and not just through Wi-Fi.

While the iPhone is the catalyst for the upgrade, all EDGE-enabled cell phones and smartphones will benefit from the boost in performance, of course.

EDGE Evolving
Ericsson, which supports the majority of the world's commercially launched EDGE networks with its hardware, would like to extend the life of the cellular-data networking technology by implementing the new EDGE Evolution protocol, which promises to triple average download speeds of EDGE networks to 1 Mbps.

All that’ll be required to improve the performance of EDGE networks is a software upgrade for existing infrastructures to increase coverage, latency and spectrum efficiency. Ericsson plans to make this update available sometime in 2009, which gives handset vendors plenty of time to implement support for EDGE Evolution into their cell phones and smartphones.

EDGE Evolution is seen as an adjunct rather than a competitor to 3G technology, which should still be faster.

Also, 3G/3.5G technologies are becoming increasingly available to cellular customers worldwide, but it may still be some time before everyone has access to them. And even then not all mobile subscribers will be in range of their carrier's 3G services all the time, and some may never be.

That's where EDGE Evolution comes in. Today, when you can't access a 3G network, your handsets drops way down to EDGE performance. With EDGE Evolution, the drop shouldn't be so far and noticeable.