With beefed up 3G, more networks to get 'Droid'

By Tim Conneally | Published November 2, 2009, 3:46 PM

Motorola Milestone aka Droid Here in the US, excitement has been high over Verizon's first Android handset, the Motorola Droid; so high, in fact, that it has actually begun to make an appreciable dent in iPhone favoritism.

This is partially due to the fact that a large number of iPhone users were Verizon customers before they got the iPhone, and still consider Verizon's wireless network to be superior to AT&T's. Verizon's "There's a map for that" advertising campaign has also added to the company's reputation for having a more robust network than AT&T.

Verizon seems to be welcoming huge consumers of mobile bandwidth with the Droid.

Now the Droid has been spotted in Germany, equipped with UMTS/GSM radios under the name Motorola Milestone on Telefonica's O2 network.

Germany's O2 network is not viewed nearly as favorably as Verizon is here in the United States; it's actually the nation's fourth largest mobile carrier behind T-Mobile, Vodafone, and KPN's E-Plus. However, the carrier has made some serious strides toward becoming a bigger competitor in the market.

Part of this is by similarly preparing for higher mobile data traffic.

In late September, O2 completed the "largest ever live network upgrade in Germany," by adding 5,199 new dual-mode 2G/3G base stations to help carry more data traffic.

The new base stations all came from Chinese wireless manufacturer Huawei Technologies, and Walter Haas, CTO Huawei Germany said, "Our advanced SingleRAN solution enables the operator to simplify the radio access network unifying both GSM and UMTS functionalities. This state-of-the-art network will be significantly enhanced in coverage quality and able to meet the operator' s demands for increased data traffic."

O2's most recent string of network upgrades started at the beginning of 2009, when the company predicted that its subscribers would consume triple the amount of mobile broadband bandwidth they did in 2008.

Comments

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Does this imply that the Droid might actually be Dual-Band (GSM/CDMA)??

Gawd, I hope so.... I can't imagine why they'd hamstring their new flagship phone by making the one's bought in the US "paperweights" whenever someone travels....though they've done it every time previous.

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Especially since most of the USA is covered by GSM and HSPA.

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...and yet Verizon still has the most coverage in the US. Go figure...

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This needs to be happening stateside in all the small cities and suburbs. Instead we have 4G rolling out in the same handful of markets that just got 3G not so long ago. For the more remote areas they need WIMax or something similar. I have great hopes for the trials now underway. The cell carriers have a market to themselves if they want it, i.e. the "last mile". As long as they price it reasonably, you're talking gold mine.

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The people getting 4G now were (mostly) getting 3G in 2006 or 2007. How is that not so long ago in terms of 3G expansion?

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"4G" i guess it time for 4G to come out..
but seriously there are many markets where 3G ha not even entered .
Here in India 3g is like something which people are "looking for ward to"
and for some its 4G time.
guess we have two universes going on right here on our planet

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