GSM, CDMA etc stands for digital cellular technologies. The name EDGE stands for Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution. When applied to GSM/GPRS networks, EDGE dramatically increases data throughputs, as well as network capacity.. Using EDGE, operators can handle three times more subscribers than GPRS, triple their data rate per subscriber, or add extra capacity to their voice communications. EDGE can actually be applied to both circuit-switched data service, where the service is technically referred to as Enhanced Circuit-Switched Data (ECSD), or to packet-switched data service, where the service is technically referred to as Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS). It provides higher internet connection speed, quick downloads and other multimedia services.

As the mobile communication market develops, interest is building for data applications and higher data rate operation. The GSM system is meeting this challenge through a sequence of evolutionary steps. From the initial voice only network, the system first added the short messaging services (SMS) followed by high speed circuit data (HSCSD) and then adding GPRS. All of these services use the same modulation format of the original GSM voice network (GMSK) and change the allocation of the bits and or packets to improve the basic GSM data rate.

After GPRS, the next step in improving the GSM system data rate is to change the signal to a type that has greater bandwidth efficiency, i.e. more bits per second can be supported per unit bandwidth. This is most economically implemented throughout the existing GSM infrastructure when the new signal type has identical bandwidth occupancy characteristics as the original GMSK signal. This is the motivation behind this next GSM enhancement, called EDGE. The primary objective for the EDGE signal is to triple the on-air data rate while meeting essentially the same bandwidth occupancy of the original GMSK signal.