General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and EDGE
Martin Sauter · 2010
This chapter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of general packet radio service (GPRS) and EDGE compared to data transmission in classic global system for mobile communications (GSM) and fixed-line networks. It then focuses on how GPRS and EDGE have been standardized and implemented. Finally, the chapter discusses some applications of GPRS and EDGE, and presents an analysis on how the network behaves during a web-browsing session. To send packet-switched data over existing GSM networks, GPRS was designed as a packet-switched addition to the circuit-switched GSM network. GPRS works in a very different way compared to the circuit-switched GSM network. This is why three new network components were introduced into the mobile network and software updates had to be made for some of the existing components. Another mobile data application that has become popular is the multimedia messaging service or MMS. Controlled Vocabulary Terms GSM; multimedia systems; packet radio networks