What's next after 3G? Three bodies of opinion dominate the thinking in the industry, Telecom Asia has found.
One view, in keeping with the cellular's optimistic, engineering tradition, is that the next round will deliver more bandwidth and all that goes with it.
Another is that the mobile industry needs to work on solving the problems of 3G before it can win the benefits of next-generation wireless.
The third is that next-gen wireless will be less about networks than a services environment.
But first, a short tutorial on language. Industry leaders are reluctant to call it "fourth generation," because of the negative connotations of 3G and because it gives the impression 2G is outdated.
"Super 3G" or "B3G," meaning beyond 3G, are the current jargon for whatever it is that's going to happen next to mobile networking. It's known as VSF-Spread OFDM (standing for variable spreading factor-spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, which may explain the attraction of the 4G tag), and DoCoMo says it delivers spectrum efficiency is 10 bits per second per hertz, about 20 times that of W-CDMA.
DoCoMo aims to make this a global standard and is working through ITU's Radiocommunications group on the spectrum aspect. At this stage it hasn't put the standard to the 3GPP or IEEE processes.
DoCoMo's is the traditional upbeat industry view: build it bigger and better and they will come.
Meanwhile, the next step up for the huge universe of GSM and W-CDMA operators is HSDPA, offering a top speed of 3.6 Mbps, but experts are cool toward it.
Network distraction
Bengt Nordstrom, chief strategy officer of inCode Wireless, says focus on networking technologies has become a distraction for cellular. "You know it all started ten years ago with HSCSD, then we said when we get packet it will be good. Then when GPRS came along we said wait for 3G. Now we continue on that path. We are waiting until HDSPA or Super-3G."
The problems faced by operators don't have to do with network throughput, Nordstrom says. Cellcos have yet to deliver a user experience with 3G that is significantly different to 2G, he argues. They are selling primarily a voice service, and consumers haven't really turned onto new features like video-telephony.
Vince Pizzica, CTO for Alcatel Asia-Pacific, says HSDPA is "one of the more limited of the broadband wireless technologies." It suffers for being "locked into" 3G standards, he says. it also suffers from being unable to deliver automatic handover as customers move from e cell to cell.
The same can be said about WiMAX, but of course WiMAX operators won't have mortgaged themselves to buy spectrum.
Alcatel is one of the mobile vendors that are also committed to WiMAX 802.16e, the mobility version of the standard, as well as UMTS evolution.
Inevitably, B3G is going to be an era of blended networks, combining multiple network technologies--3G, HSDPA, WiMAX, Wi-Fi and fixed networks. Hartmut Kremling, CTO of Vodafone D2 in Germany, describes it as a "framework for ambient service delivery across heterogeneous networks."
With IP universally deployed in the core of both fixed and wireless networks, he forecasts an end to vertical networks and the offering of horizontally-integrated services. Intel has a similar vision, with wireless boss Sean Maloney hoping that by 2009 the firm will be selling a combined 3G-WiMAX chip.
Of course this technology evolution is easier said than done. Nordstrom suggests it will be driven more by fixed-line broadband players than cellular, who can see that converged IP networking will make them vulnerable, and who do not see as good a business case from mobile broadband as for voice and messaging.
