Third world Comms

There is a big call on mobile tech these days.

Phones (like the one I am using now) are far more sophisticated than large computers of yesteryear. If the old analogy of a computer being like a kitchen still holds then mobiles are like restaurants. We even get different menus. Big and mostly better quality but rarely open access and almost never cheep.
Think of the video, audio, browsing, uploads, downloads, social ‘ping’ status updates etc an it all adds up and we want it to work faster and faster.

In the UK we often think ourselves in the forefront of tech. With a lot of the advances of the ’50 thru ’80 originating here. But times are changing so rapidly. We were overtaken by the likes of South Korea and Japan long ago and we accept that and shrug but now we are falling behind the huge international power of —
Lithuania.

We have just really started to get to grips with the 3G world. We pay thru the nose and get broken, lousy connectivity and say “thank you”. We are now purchasing more such devices as we slowly get the idea that information is available everywhere and it is about, well, anywhere and anything. We can make our minds up completely on the fly and get the supporting info only when we need it. No pre plan required just “go with the flow”.

Android, iPad 3G, iPhone and so many other techs bring the interfaces to the masses meaning that we all can now find the nearest theatre, movie or whatever. Or even job centre, vacancy, houses for sale in our vicinity.

But as I have said, time roles on an tech gets updated so 3G gets replaced by 4G.
Anyone know of a UK 4G carrier? A pre trial on O2 doesn’t count.

Lithuania have one.
Oh, and Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway.
I know – I can see the trend there.
But several companies are rolling out across the US – looking for 75% coverage
.
Why all the fuss?
Well, our 3G is running currently at a theoretical maximum of 7Mb. I have never seen this but it does hit 1Mb if you stand still in a high signal strength area. Move and it drops to 0.3Mb or worse – down to GPRS and ~60kbps.
4G has been tested as providing ~50Mb when static and ~10Mb when moving.
That’s some improvement and better than a lot of broadband services in the UK.
(it should be noted that they were ‘moving’ at 10 kph)
In the US they reused their analogue TV band for 4G. If we do the same here that would delay roll out ’til 2012 Q4.

The current UK government can’t get the legislation through in less than 12-18 months so we may see more improvements to 3G first.
So we even fall behind Uzbekistan.

I’m looking forward to ‘3’ rebranding.
Perhaps we’ll skip straight to 5G? Then ‘3’ could co-brand with the TV channel.

Further reading:
http://www.4g.co.uk
Wikipedia.org/wiki/4G
Wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
3gpp.org

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