A Brief Overview of the Evolution of 4G - The Challenge
(Page 4 of 5 )
Now the time has come for us to dwell a little bit on the challenges of the pre-4G systems. There's a powerful race going on between the competitors because 4G is a terrific business opportunity. It's so profitable that once world domination is achieved by one of them, corporations and organizations can reap large rewards.
WiMAX's main competition to becoming globally accepted and widespread is the presence of other services providing Internet access at reasonable speeds for acceptable prices on what are already somewhat decent wireless broadband networks. Here we can mention Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, for example.
However, standards such as the European HiperMan and South Korean WiBro are not considered competition anymore, rather just complementary. The other main competitors of WiMAX are the already existing and somewhat omnipresent 3G systems. Here we refer to UMTS and CDMA2000. Both of them are currently under heavy development in order to help transition to a 4G system, but we already know that.
Notwithstanding, these already have an entrenched infrastructure that allows users to change systems where the other isn't present, so compatibility isn't an issue. It's much harder to compete with already accepted and widespread coverage than to establish and deploy something from scratch. So basically, the most important toe-to-toe competitor of WiMAX is 3GPP LTE.
All in all, the main goal for both WiMAX and LTE is to reach 100mbps mobile and 1gbps fixed-nomadic bandwidth, because this is the requirement for 4G NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Network) set by ITU-R. This is where the race begins. These are aggressive requirements.
Other main objectives of the 4G wireless standard, along with the ones previously mentioned (defined by ITU-R), are the following: spectrally efficient system, high network capacity, interoperability with existing wireless standards, entirely IP-based packet-switched network, global roaming across multiple networks, smooth hand off via heterogeneous networks, and high-quality support for next-gen services (such as HDTV and others).
During the introduction at the beginning of this article, we mentioned that Arun Sarin, Vodafone CEO, tried to calm the race towards 4G by pointing out some of the well-known facts that some competitors have overlooked. For example, Googleis searching for strategies to "reach" the end-user customer directly without the need for mobile operator providers. This sounds scary for operators all over the world.
This becomes even "scarier" knowing that Google has all kinds of resources to fund this research, starting with mental capacity (people power) and ending with financial power. And the Google brand is powerful and popular enough to basically earn recognition in the field "overnight."
4G looks promising on paper and should result in automatic business success as soon as it becomes "market-ready." However, this isn't 100 percent guaranteed. Years ago when 3G was finally functional and developed, the marketplace lacked cell phones with 3G support and thus, a significant lag resulted.
One thing is clear: the development process of 4G requires lots of energy - time and money, specifically. It is estimated that around $10 billion is necessary to develop and integrate a worldwide infrastructure. Either way, around 80% of the features of both WiMAX and LTE are somewhat similar. As far as the customer goes, it is quite irrelevant which one "wins" this race because the end-user reaps the benefits either way.
All in all, Arun Sarin's message was that right now we don't need competition. We need to support the development toward the highest good of all, reaching the necessary goals of 4G. He suggests a sort of unified and complementary approach where there is no competition. Thus, the solution would be a network mix!
"We should make WiMax part of the TDD [time division duplex] section of the LTE standard. We need unified standards, not competing standards." ~ Arun Siren.
At least, that's the way Vodafone sees the future of next-generation wireless networks. Mary Chan, head of wireless at Alcatel, also believes that the idea has legs and has stated the following: "We're looking at the potential for this in the TDD standards work of LTE." Most importantly, this TDD LTE mixture of networks would work best in particular areas, such as China, where CDMA is dominating.
The bottom line is that we, the end-user consumers, will reap the benefits either way and that the evolution towards 4G cannot be stopped. It evolves just as the Internet advances toward Web 3.0, which is yet another version number akin to the 4 in 4th Generation. Sooner or later (estimating around 2009-2010), we are going to enjoy hi-tech cellular technologies at reasonably acceptable prices worldwide!
Next: Final Words >>
More Opinions Articles
More By Barzan "Tony" Antal
| Recommended by Dev Hardware |
|---|
|
/ 10 
