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4G whillikers

Monday, 27 August 2007

Next generation mobile begins to take shape…

Today sees Samsung Electronics hosting its fifth annual 4G Forum. Staged in Seoul the event will involve over 130 high-profile industry leaders, academics, and representatives from standardisation bodies and service providers from 26 countries discussing 4G ‘visions and strategies’ under the theme ‘Explore Technology & Standard for 4G Realization’. For the first time at a Samsung 4G shindig all three of what the Korean vendor styles the ‘leading’ candidates for 4G technology - IEEE 802.16m (mobile WiMAX), 3GPP2 Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB), and 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) - will participate in a bake-off in one location. The technologies will be respectively promoted by Sprint-Nextel, Qualcomm, and T-Mobile.

Samsung’s selection of 802.16m, UMB and LTE as the most likely 4G technology candidates is mirrored in a new report – ‘The Road to 4G: Will LTE, UMB and WiMAX Just Be Stops Along the Way?’ – published by the US-headquartered market research firm In-Stat. Among the takeaways from the In-Stat analysis are that:

·         two widely expected requirements for 4G technologies are that they be OFDMA-based, and that they support 100Mbits/s for wide area mobile applications
·         with the dominant worldwide technology currently being GSM/EDGE, and HSPA and EV-DO handsets not expected to be dominant until 2012, 4G technology roll-outs will most likely start in the 2010 to 2012 timeframe
·         it is widely believed that mobile operators will initially deploy 4G very slowly, relying on their EV-DO or HSPA networks to provide for more ubiquitous coverage
·         drivers of LTE, UMB and 802.16m WiMAX adoption will include the following: the re-allocation of older spectrum for 4G technologies; the resolution of any WiMAX IPR issues; the creation of FDD profiles for 802.16e WiMAX; the uptake rate of 802.16e in mobile PCs; the uptake rate of 3G cellular in mobile PCs; the continued evolution of the mobile handset; and an increase in the uptake rate of wireless broadband technologies into portable CE devices
·         realistically, initial implementations of LTE, UMB and 802.16m WiMAX may fall short of throughput and other expectations, with later enhancements, or even some type of technology combination, actually bringing real 4G to the table

There are some other thoughts on what 4G might be or might involve. China Mobile’s Research Institute, for example, believes it’s something dubbed Wireless Internet protocol on Internet Service Environment (WIISE) (click). Again, a vendor such as Nortel Networks, which has just announced new 4G tie-ups with research departments at universities in Canada , Taiwan and the USA , includes IEEE 802.16e-2005 in its roster of candidate technologies. Again, storage, communications, and consumer silicon specialist Marvell Technology, along with LG Electronics, appear to believe that Korea Telecom’s WiBro network is already 4G; in a recent announcement the duo says they are shipping ‘4G’ Smartphones for use on that network.

The trouble with taking a position on 4G, though, is that 4G will probably be what the ITU says it is, and the ITU hasn’t had its say yet on what it dubs IMT-Advanced. This much is acknowledged by In-Stat “Companies are extremely uncomfortable talking about ‘4G’ technologies, since the ITU has not defined 4G yet,” says Gemma Tedesco, In-Stat analyst. “However, each of the contending 4G technologies has a cheerleader, with Ericsson touting LTE, Qualcomm preferring UMB, and Intel touting 802.16m WiMAX.”

3G Americas makes this point about the 4G role of the ITU somewhat more forcefully. Last month the organisation published a white paper entitled ‘Defining 4G: Understanding the ITU Process for the Next Generation of Wireless Technology’. On that occasion Chris Pearson, president of 3G Americas , stated: “The ITU is currently establishing criteria for IMT-Advanced and will be screening various technologies for inclusion in the IMT-Advanced family. Only then will we understand what is and can be rightly and credibly called 4G.”

“Any claim today that a particular technology is a so-called ‘4G technology’, in reality, is simply a marketing spin, creating market confusion and deflating the importance of the telecommunications industry standards,” added Pearson. “Technologies should be verified against a set of agreed-upon requirements in order to qualify as 4G, and this will happen in the future when the requirements are outlined by the ITU.”
John Williamson