Whatever happened to 4G? 26/11/10
Posted by Cloud Net on Fri, Nov 26, 2010 @ 02:58 AM
No sooner was the auction over for the 3G licences than people were talking about the awesome possibilities associated with 4G.
If you can’t do it bend the truth?
Now the Americans have solved the problem. Don’t bother doing it- simply say you’ve done it. Otherwise that is called lying (sorry to be quite so straight forward). So for example airing across the US is the latest ad from T-Mobile:
So where are we today with 4G in the UK?
In a briefing in December 2009 Ed Richards, the £350K a year Chief Exec of Ofcom, and Graham Louth, Director of Spectrum Markets confidently predicted that the long delayed auction of 4G licences would happen in the first quarter of 2011 – or to give some “wiggle room” in the first half of 2011. (see http://media.ofcom.org.uk/files/2010/06/Analyst_briefing.pdf)
Shame then when in July 2010 Ed Vaizey, the £130K a year Minister for Communications, told Ofcom to conduct the 4G auction in late 2011. The auction will be the 2.6GHz and digital dividend 800MHz spectrum as well as the liberalisation and refarming of 2G spectrum at 900MHz and 1800MHz to allow operators to use these frequencies for 3G.
"Under our plans, our mobile industry will have access to the 21st century infrastructure it needs to give UK consumers the latest technologies and even better coverage for broadband on their mobile phones," Vaizey said.
This puts the UK behind other European nations including Germany who have already auctioned the 2.6GHz spectrum.
The UK auction was originally slated for 2008 but BT, T-Mobile and Orange delayed everything as they threatened legal action against the government.
Whatever it’s called and whatever it’s used for
The 2.6GHz band, also called '3G expansion band', can be used for the long-term evolution (LTE) of 3G. LTE, generally also known as '4G', is a much faster alternative to current mobile broadband technologies.
LTE, based on IP technology, offers high speeds and capacity, and lower latency, than previous technologies. It will be great for HD video, videoconferencing and online gaming.
You can see real 4G streaming in operation in a somewhat underwhelming demo here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZx-m5qQPD0
When will 4G actually happen?
It does seem that the auction is expected to happen sometime in 2011 which means we may see new devices coming on to the market in 2012.
The good thing for us is that by 2012 Cloud Net will be able to offer you real time video streaming with full telepresence on demand. If the others had got their acts together we’d have been too late to the party. So thanks T-Mobile, BT and Orange. Sorry to the rest of you.
Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloudnet