TTPCom is using this week’s Wireless Japan show in Tokyo to demonsrtae a Class 12 Edge reference design that can achieve downlink data rates up to 236.8 kbit/s over an Edge wireless link.
Obligatory PR fluff warning. It is a nice achievement though. The earliest anyone might see production hardware using TTPCom’s technology would Q12004. Of course EDGE is a hack at best, but speed is speed. It might not be true 3G, but it’s better than vanilla GPRS.
It’s also interesting to note that high speed isn’t limited to only the downstream (in theory):
For example, Matthews said designers can allocate three slots for the downlink and two slots for the uplink to achieve a 180/120 kbit/s downlink-to-uplink data rate ratio.
This is all theoretical pre-production stuff, but it might be a nice crutch until 3G arrives in the US.