Infineon unleashes 4G chip German chipmaker Infineon Technologies is sampling a new multi-standard transceiver chip sure to heat up the ongoing 4G contest between LTE and WiMAX. Thanks to a push from companies like Intel, Sprint, Clearwire, Google, and others, the WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) standard has already hit the …
The faster we get with our cellular broadband, the more I have to wonder, what kind of handsets will truly take advantage of the faster technology? Do we currently have processors in phones fast enough to handle signal processing, download data, render HTML/WML, and decode graphics with speed as to do the technology justice? Sure, we can do faster processors, but can we do that without requiring a fan on the mobile?
The answer may lie under my chin as I have yet to try a mobile with WiFi.
Paris, what's under HER chin?
And a huge advantage in the placing of infrastructure in new locations. Why bother laying miles of cable when you can get away using a few set transmitters. As an alternative to fibre to home, its by far a cheaper solution and one which provides a lot less problems then the good old BT method of digging up roads and causing no end of mayhem.
I might be over simplifying things, but as a home connection replacement, 3g is already trying to edge into this market. Yet failing due to the infrastructure being there. In areas without the infrastructure 3g, and 4g/WiMax has a huge potential. And one thankfully away from BT.
While telco's are probably not desperate to upgrade their entire networks to support any new standards, they do now have established mobile data customer bases. So, as long as they don't have to bid for spectrum they will continue to roll out new kit and upgrade key locations: stations, airports, etc. just as they have with UMTS to HSDPA and then HSUPA and LTE fits in nicely. Probably available first as a USB stick before getting Jobs to tell everyone how great the JesusPhone 4G is - the fanboys. As for what the bandwidth will be used for - porn, just like normal highspeed internet connections.
3G isn't all that slow, why do we need 4G?
new things allowed by 3G:-
-video calling (I've never done or even wanted to do)
-faster data access (expensive so I avoid, generally use wifi)
my phones (E71) slow even when using wifi so a faster speeds unlikely to change that much
3G as a board band replacement only works as the phone companies are selling excess capacity and is almost all profit allowing for the really good deals available. Think that when they have to build a new network to offer the same service that will still be true?
Cell speeds vary - they don't however depend on the load in the network as a whole, rather more where you are, what your trying to do and how many others are doing it within your cell / carrier - so load there rather than the network.
LTE+ currently has speed in excess of 340 Mb/s (as tested by NSN last year), but will be a long time before we can get anywhere near that, early adoption can expect around 40-50 Mb/s.
WiMAX is never going to keep trend with LTE in terms of bandwidth - they are comparable in the earliest rollout phases (as indeed is HS+) but long term LTE is superior (currently and has been for a while).
Its unlikely you'll see (at least advertised) the LTE rollout, it'll simply be subsumed into the normal upgrade process we are seeing now in HS - hence the name evolution in LTE. Whilst different hardware in the base station for Joe Blogs it'll be mostly behind the scenes, flash updates to data cards, new software patch, etc.
Mobility is a bit of a misnomer - what we are talking about is ubiquitous over air connectivity, so you can roll up anywhere and use you laptop / a another UE and get decent throughput - again its that sort of hotspot ideology (from the early WiFi days) that is already being used for HS and will continue into LTE. Nobody is going to be walking about streaming a HD film to watch, they may however sit somewhere and do so.
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