Top telecom gear-makers and mobile spy companies are going all crazy about 4G in unison. 4G’s trumpet in being blown and it is touted to rule the roost over all things related to vendors’ mobility, operators and customers. Even so, there is still more than a strong case for the 3G (third generation) platform being the domineering force in technology in the ongoing decade – definitely till 2018.
Indian telcos don’t have to fret over being at risk since they have gone for 4G in the LTE-TDD platform that is being used, while the Western countries have chosen other technological variants. One must also factor in the fact that data traffic all around the world on mobile networks grew by a 100 percent in the previous year, which depicts the future for the operators, consumers and vendors.
LTE is now defined as a distinctive global technology standard for the first time in technological history. Even though 4G technology platforms are of two types –TDD and FDD, but the categories are founded on the same software even if the radio modulations differ. Let’s recall what happened to 2G that had various standards.
Even the modern day handsets are built to cater to various frequency types. Of course, if one is using LTE for frequencies not present in other countries, it will be challenging from the perspective of the ecosystem. It’s extremely difficult to predict the duration needed for the ecosystem of LTE and TDD to grow and mature. Definitely there is talk of scale and its combination in the industry, as people vie to enhance the ecosystem’s efficiency.
Let’s look at the stats. At the culmination of 2012, the world had 6.3 billion mobile subscribers, and only 60 million had LTE. Hence, one needs to keep in mind that both 2G and 3G still persist in the functionality of the world’s big machine. In the last quarter of the previous year, for the first time in history 3G customers in the world exceeded the 2G customers.
Even so 3G is still constructing the big machine as things stand. When one sees what is being prognosticated in the market, Ericsson’s mobility report predicts that most of the people that have mobile broadband till 2018 would be on 3G. The company’s outlook states that around 1.5 billion out of nine billion mobile subscribers would have 4G. 3G seems like being the domineering technology of this decade for all money. However, we still need to keep one thing in mind: we are witnessing the most rapid technology change ever, when we juxtapose the current shift go the transition from 1G to 2G and then to 3G.
And make no mistake about it; this indeed is a global standard. Every single country would possess LTE-based 4G. There is no denying that the speeds of 3G have dramatically increased. It was once thought that 21 mbps/second would 3G’s apogee, but we now have networks on 84 mbps and have given 168 mbps/second a shot.
As things stand, around 65 percent of the revenues of top telecom companies come from software and services. Can they grow on that? Think of 2G, which now needs additional software updates, and then take a peek at 3G – it’s about software now, more so than networks.
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