Well, the idea of 4G is simple and the idea is a very attractive one. Take one laptop and one user. But don’t take a single cable or Wi-Fi enabling facility. The user opens the afore-mentioned laptop, downloads music or film, and downloads them at a fast broadband speed, before perhaps surfing the Internet if desired.

The ITU has long been sympathetic towards 4G, defining 4G technology as a future wireless telecommunications technology which will allow data transfer rates of 1Gb/s in nomadic circumstances (that is to say, with the user on the move) and of 100Mb/s in stationary circumstances.

Major companies are interested in 4G, and they are investing substantially. Samsung is one of this number. One report romantically transports its readers to a remote location in South Korea called Jeju, a volcanic island to which Korean monarchs once banished dissident thinkers but which now hosts casino-seeking tourists. Not to mention Samsung specialists revealing their prototype 4G system. So far so good?

Needless to say, there are the splits in opinion. One such split is understandable - there are those who question the prospects for 4G. They speculate in exactly the same way as those who have questioned the future of every single form of technology that has ever been developed and unveiled before the eyes of sceptical observers.

That is understandable, normal, par for the course. Listen to the words of Edward Snyder, an analyst at Charter Equity Research: "4G is just much ado about nothing…There's no business model here. Just a lot of marketing and hot air."

And yet compare those words with the comment by Godfrey Chua, Research Manager, Wireless and Mobile Infrastructure, IDC: “The power of WiMAX for high-bandwidth applications opens a whole new world of mobility that provides new capabilities and processes for businesses and new revenue-generating services for operators…WiMAX has the potential to revolutionise entertainment, provide communication capabilities that haven’t even been considered yet, and bring the true Internet experience to the mobile realm.”

The pessimists summarise their case first and foremost by putting their faith in existing technology: fixed-line access will still be faster and cheaper. They question whether customers will actually be convinced of the need for 4G at all. For even the infrastructure costs of nationwide wireless networks will be passed onto the customer.

Needless to say, defining 4G is proving hard with every specialist coming to his or her own conclusion. Speed is the unifying factor: 4G equals the transmission of data at 1Gb/s, or one complete film downloaded in six seconds.

Then there is the split within those who believe in 4G, in other words the 4G participants. Intel has pioneered WiMAX as its wireless broadband system. As a manufacturer of chips it has put its trust in persuading customers that they can employ wireless access to their Internet facilities even though for the most part they currently have fixed-line facilities. Intel hopes to cash in through selling the semi-conductors and related equipment needed to make wireless Internet access a reality. In fact, the company is optimistic if the views of one of its CTOs are anything to go by. Siavash Alamouti challenges Intel’s critics by stating: “That’s like saying you don't need a cellphone because you have (fixed-line) phones at home and in the office.”

Intel may have learnt a lesson from history. Unlike Philips or Sony who developed their own forms of video recorder - Betamax being the better-remembered - but who ended up with nothing, Intel feels a need to persuade the like-minded into its camp. Royalties on sales of Intel equipment are deliberately set at low percentages, e.g., 2% or 3% of the price paid. This is well below the percentage levied by other companies. Lower royalties mean lower prices mean more customer loyalty. Intel will not be isolated as it tries to play a key role in 4G.

And the part played by Samsung?

WiMAX is not confined to Intel. Samsung claims to offer download speeds which are cutting edge. Its promised 1 Gb/s data speed is estimated to be 50 times faster than current Mobile WiMax technology. To transfer an 800 Mb film will take 5.6 seconds, to transfer 100 MP3 files taking up 300Mb will take 2.4 seconds.

Samsung will act as provider of Mobile WiMAX handsets and systems to SprintNextel (see below). It will, in addition, commercialise Mobile WiMAX within seven different countries, including Brazil, and in alliance with nine major operators.

Samsung is no newcomer to 4G, having hosted an annual 4G conference since 2003. Its Jeju demonstration featured a 4G prototype (data transmission reached 1 GB/s inside the conference venue) not to mention a ride on a bus for the 50 executives and academics in attendance just to show it actually worked, whether over a distance or on the move (where data transmission reached 100 Mb/s). It was the culmination of two years of research by 170 engineers who for the most part had doctorates from leading American universities. And the prototype cost over US$100 million.

Samsung has a point to prove, considering itself to have been lagging behind its competitors in previous technological innovations but now, in the words of Samsung’s telecommunications President Lee Ki Tae: “In the past, we were behind in intellectual property…In the next generation, we are trying to be ahead.”

And the others?

The second of the two 4G standards striving to emerge as the winner is based on existing cellphone technology. It seeks to modify cellphone technology and move data more quickly. Specific proponents are companies such as Nortel, Ericsson, Qualcomm and DoCoMo. The latter is not only the largest wireless carrier in Japan but it also attained the transmission speeds expected of 4G back in 2003. DoCoMo’s roadmap forms a separate article in this 4G review.

Two years before DoCoMo’s success, as if it was not enough, the Japanese Government declared its support for 4G as a national aspiration. In the words of Japan’s Mobile Communications Division Deputy Director Yuji Nakamura: “Now is the time when companies are hurrying to grab 4G territory.”

Innovation from Nortel

Nortel has recently announced what it believes to be telecoms’ first end-to-end mobile MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output)-powered WiMAX solution to deliver 4G mobile content. The content is intended to range from Internet worldwide, mobile video, VoIP, streaming media, data applications and mobile electronic commerce.

The WiMAX World USA 2006 trade show in Boston gave Nortel the opportunity to showcase its new Mobile WiMAX solution. Nortel claimed that operators will be able to deliver video-grade content for as little as one-tenth the cost per bit of current 3G wireless networks. An additional claim is that when compared to non-MIMO WiMAX solutions Nortel’s new product can deliver three times the speed and twice the subscriber capacity, along with greater range and building penetration in urban areas.

The ultimate result is intended to be the lowest total cost of ownership model for operators, allowing them to deliver new revenue-generating applications with minimal investment, as well as creating an opportunity for new entrants to compete in the wireless content delivery business.

Nortel is no shrinking violet when it comes to stating the new system’s capabilities: speeds rivalling current home broadband Internet technologies with much greater efficiency than current wireless capabilities, declares the company press release.

And as for Peter MacKinnon, Nortel's General Manager of WiMAX: "WiMAX is a profoundly disruptive technology. It will change the way content is delivered, the way users access information and entertainment as well as the economics of wireless operators. As the first 4G technology available, WiMAX will transition the consumer experience from today’s wireless connectivity to tomorrow’s true mobility. Users will be able to replicate their PC capabilities, such as blogging, video and VoIP, anywhere.

Nortel attributes these aspirations to its having built its mobile WiMAX solution on the foundation of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and OFDM-MIMO, a combination of transmission and antenna technologies that maximises spectrum to deliver the speeds and bandwidth essential for high-quality mobile video and TV.

Nortel’s WiMAX solutions are at present undergoing trials with carriers around the world, including Asia, Europe and the Americas.

How do you market 4G?

SprintNextel is the key company whose task it is to market 4G. One of the company’s Vice-Presidents is Bin Shen, who estimates the value of Internet access at a staggering US$60 billion when the last piece of equipment is factored in. Product innovation in the 4G sector means patents, which means royalties when the orders come flooding in (in theory, anyway). And there will be a major meeting next year when industry regulators assemble to thrash out a standard.

SprintNextel can never be accused of lack of commitment or half-heartedness. It recently announced a budget of US$3 million to build a 4G network based on a combination of technology from Intel and Samsung but also from Motorola. As many as 100 million are intended to have access to this “trial” by December 2008. Bin Shen is confident of the crucial part the Internet will play in people’s lives, thereby generating a role for 4G: “We believe the Internet will be like air, something you want everywhere you go.”

Looking to the future - but first the disruptions

It must be said from the start that there can be disruptive factors as 4G evolves. SprintNextel, the third largest mobile service in the USA, has disappointed investors for two quarters running. In fact, you would have to go back 48 months to find a similar such report.

Critics are harsher still as some estimate another year will be necessary for SprintNextel to recover. As if that was not enough the critics point out that in their humble opinion the company’s telephones are unexciting in their design and the company’s marketing leaves much to be desired.

Will there even be a SprintNextel, venture some? After all, if this is the record over two years wouldn’t it just be simpler for someone to acquire SprintNextel, before further damage? This is actually the view of one analyst whose firm handles over 1 million SprintNextel shares.

So, as in some many telecoms enterprises, there are always the little local difficulties.

That hasn’t stopped the rumours, though. Comcast is the player who, according to some observers, will buy SprintNextel for around US$70 million to weld Comcast’s cable operations into the wireless assets owned by SprintNextel. It all seems so easy, and anyway talk is cheap and Wall Street gossip creates the instability which creates the stockbroker commissions. And what is more, Comcast shares do happen to have risen by 50% in the last year, compared to 10% for the top 500 companies.

A voice of dissent (or should that be a voice from the real world?) comes from Douglas Shapiro, one of Bank of America’s analysts. He reels off a list of obstacles as to why Comcast will not make this particular move.

Comcast shares are moving in an upward direction - if something is broke, don’t fix it. And what about the customer churn that is said to affect SprintNextel, not to mention its failure to win large numbers of subscribers?

Oh, and there is one company that Comcast tried to acquire two years ago - Disney. The attempt failed, and Mr Shapiro believes this has had a deep impact on the board of Comcast.

Our accompanying article by DoCoMo is bullish in its approach, in contrast to the difficulties in marketing predicted for SprintNextel. Disruptive is a term which can be applied to problems of this nature. But in telecoms, as we all know, there are some words which rather tend to change their meaning and nuance. Enter the re-interpretation of disruptive, as a word which can have a positive meaning when it comes to 4G technology...

Telsima Corporation, for example, is introducing Trufle, its mobility framework that promises just such a disruptive impact on the 4G market. What Telsima means is not that there will be some catastrophic consequence arising from employing its equipment but rather that it is designed to disturb the existing pace of things and speed everything up.

Anyway, Trufle is described a “lightweight architecture and software solution that enables the use of commoditised network elements, significantly reducing the infrastructure investments for mobile solutions.” It is aimed at Mobile IP, in that it does not require any special software on the WiMAX mobile station or handheld, in the way that Mobile IP requires this. It promises seamless carrier grade handover at vehicular speeds for early next year when OFDMA technologies become available.

Last word

The spectrums for 4G technology will be decided at the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) in October 2007. The 4G mobile communications format is expected to become commercially available around 2010.

It is clear that 4G will have an important role to play. Without a fraction of the aggravation and scepticism witnessed during the gearing up for 3G. In fact, 4G’s a jolly good fellow.

more info:

• www.samsung.com
• www.nortelnetworks.com
• www.4g.co.uk
  
• www.intel.com
  
• www.comcast.com
• www.sprint.com