4G-Long Term Evolution
As strategists in the service provider arena struggle to develop migration paths to “quad-play” service capabilities, the emerging reality of where the service paradigm is headed on a very near horizon suggests an entirely different vision will dictate what will soon be on offer to consumers.
The vision begins with a new generation of mobile chipsets undergoing rapid development for 4G services and extends to the ability of well-positioned service providers to leverage fixed and wireless access assets to create a seamless broadband experience for end users on whatever device they’re using wherever they are. It’s an all-IP based service without geographic or applications boundaries that renders today’s thinking about voice, TV and Internet service categories obsolete.
Of course, there’s nothing new about this vision – it has long been the topic of blue sky discussions about the way the telecommunications business will operate some day. What’s new is the fact that the components to the vision are coming together at warp speed, thanks to the accelerated 4G agendas widely embraced by mobile carriers across the world. In response to this demand, the scale of demand for 4G technology has inspired manufacturers of the ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) and DSPs (digital signal processors) that will drive this revolution to schedule delivery of next-generation devices for tests and trials starting next year.
4G, whether LTE (Long-Term Evolution) or WiMAX, will vastly outperform the data rates of 3G, which, depending on the volume of contention for bandwidth, typically range between 500 kilobits per second and 1.5 mbps. WiMAX will deliver something on the order of 3 mbps to users, while LTE, with 100 mbps available over 20 MHz of spectrum, will typically deliver even higher rates per user.
For example, Ericsson at the Wireless Show in Las Vegas in early April announced its mobile ASICs built to LTE 4G specifications will be available in sample quantities later this year and at commercial volumes in 2009, with handsets, USB connectors, laptops and other next-gen devices to follow in 2010. Ericsson says the chips will support peak rates of up to 100 megabits per second in the downlink and up to 50 mbps in the uplink at bandwidths between 1.4 and 20 megaHertz in six spectrum bands, including the newly auctioned 700 MHz blocks.
Perhaps most important, Ericsson’s and other 4G chipsets under development by manufacturers worldwide will support integration with other handset platforms to create multi-mode devices. In contrast to all previous generation mobile networks, where dichotomies between multiplexing techniques made cross-platform implementations difficult and costly, the leading 4G platforms are based on the same air interface technology – Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing – which not only makes dual-mode devices easer to make; it creates a broader market base for chipset developers with regard to a core component of the processing architecture.
Moreover, because 4G will lead to all-IP service in contrast to the switched circuit-IP data combo intrinsic to 3G, significant cost benefits will accrue to end user devices and across the entire next-gen mobile infrastructure. This means dual-mode integration leveraging a Wi-Fi or WiMAX bridge between the mobile and fixed IP networks will be far more seamless and lower cost than today’s stumbling attempts at dual-mode integration between fixed and mobile services.
It’s important to bear in mind that the accelerating force behind 4G is not just what U.S. carriers will do with the technology as they evolve from 3G; it’s the likelihood that many carriers in Europe and elsewhere who have yet to move to 3G will skip that step and go directly to 4G, plus the fact that throughout most of the developing world where fixed services are limited or non-existent 4G will become the basic service platform for hundreds of millions of people.
These volume prospects mean that single-mode LTE chipsets could cost less than $10, according to research performed by Motorola. When one adds to all this the fact that the multiple network integrating power of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) technology has moved from testing to commercial implementation in mobile networks for enterprise applications, the prospects for fully integrated all-IP broadband services that obliterate the divisions between fixed and mobile appear indisputable..
Source:tmng.com
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