telco2005_telco 23/05/2013 17:42 Page 1
WIRELESS WATCH
Who pays for 4G?
Steve Gold thinks he knows what will drive the take-up of 4G services, and it won't necessarily be so-called 'speed freaks'.
’ve been listening to a lot of cellular experts over the last few months, many of whom have been telling me that the data speed advantages of 4G cellular are insufficient to persuade existing 3G users in the UK to move on up to the benefits that 4G offers. Trotting around the UK – and Western Europe – with my 3G MiFi unit, which whirs along at around 4 megabits-per-second (Mbps), I was in agreement until quite recently, when I discovered a friend has an EE (Everything Everywhere) 4G MiFi unit - a device which allows several WiFi-enabled devices to access a 4G-driven mobile broadband connection. I ran a speed test on my Android smartphone - the results were impressive: 24 Mbps downstream and 12 Mbps upstream. Not bad for the wilds of Derbyshire, where landline broadband runs at a quarter of this speed. On investigation, it appears that EE now has 50% coverage of the UK with its 4G network - and is on course for 70% by the end of the year. Perhaps more importantly, however, other cellcos are also ramping up their plans for 4G services - including Three, which has committed itself to not charging a premium for 4G services - unlike the others. This speed jump with 4G is very similar to that which we saw when 3G started to take off as a mobile broadband medium
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in the latter part of the last decade - replacing slower-speed 2.5G mobile services. And compared to the 4 Mbps I get, the speed jump is significant. With EE claiming a top speed of 80 Mbps downstream in ideal real-world conditions, this is the equivalent of the fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) services that a growing number of metro UK landline Internet users are now enjoying in the UK. And this is where 4G will find its audience – not amongst the minority of speed freaks, but amongst the majority of landline broadband users who discover they can achieve close to FTTC-based speeds on a truly mobile basis. For the cellular carriers this is an important step, since 4G is much more spectrally efficient than 3G services. We may yet see 3G service capabilities being thinned out in favour of 4G – and the networks encouraging the use of 4G by offering tariffs that permit 4G-network usage at legacy rate speeds. More immediately, however, the recent tests of 4G in the UK’s Lake District suggest that there is a ready market for 4G in rural areas who are limited to relatively pedestrian landline broadband speeds by infrastructure issues. According to Russell Lux, commercial director of Teliqo, a bespoke business telecoms company, it is experiments such as the EE/Lake District project that highlight the need to accelerate and Steve Gold expand the rollout of From his base in next-generation infraSheffield, England, Steve has been a structures. Lux says telecommunications that common probjournalist for 26 years, lems for telephony 21 of them full-time. and broadband E-mail him at [email protected] Internet connectivity
in rural areas include the relatively long distances from exchanges diluting speeds and low population densities, which make network expansion into those areas less commercially attractive. But, he adds, it is just as important to bring the speed and consistency of 4G services to rural communities, as it is to equip urban centres. “Broadband roll-out has always prioritised urban areas, with towns and cities getting network upgrades long before more remote areas. And whilst it’s obviously important that centres of population and economic production have high-speed Internet, rural communities are equally as dependent on efficient broadband and telephony networks for their economic success,” he said. “In fact, endusers in rural areas may even feel more of a benefit than their counterparts in big cities where emerging networks are straining to deliver headline performance for more densely-packed online populations.” The key quest facing the cellcos, of course, is where the revenue to pay for the rollout of a 4G infrastructure in rural areas is going to come from. Lux notes that much of rural Britain’s economy depends on tourism, and tourists increasingly expect to have Internet access wherever they are. “This is especially the case as our dependence on smartphones, tablets, and laptops to work on the move – even when we are supposed to be on holiday – continues to rise. For the owner of a rural pub or bed and breakfast, the ability to provide guests with always-on connectivity may be the difference between taking enough book-
ings to thrive and struggling through the season,” he added. But, he argues, it is not just the tourism industry that stands to benefit – farmers and their food retail businesses will reap the rewards too, with access to telemedicine techniques for their livestock and much more reliable contact with suppliers, distributors, and vets. Lux concludes that, with rural industries under increasing economic pressures, investing in rural broadband networks provides vital support to remote communities, helping to safeguard jobs in the tourism and agriculture sectors and providing high-performance infrastructure that will benefit these areas for years to come. I think he’s right too – this vision is also shared by Olaf Swantee, EE’s CEO, who is fast gaining a reputation as a guru in the cellular industry, owing to his strategy of pushing EE – at great cost, I might add – down the path of becoming a 4G pioneer network in the UK. Swantee says that EE is well on the way to bringing 4G access to 70% of the UK’s population by the end of 2013. “Our 4G rollout is ensuring that we’re connecting people right across the UK to one of the fastest mobile networks in the world, as quickly as possible,” he says. “Consumers and businesses in the UK use mobile Internet more than any other market, and we’re working to meet that demand right across the country. We’ll roll out 4G to 98 per cent of people in 2014, including the double-speed 4G that will launch this summer,” he enthused. Only six months ago, I was highly sceptical of the need for 4G in a market where 3G – thanks to the intelligent re-farming of 2G spectrum – was becoming pervasive in most city and urban areas. With the benefit of hindsight, I now realise that 4G represents a leap forward owing to the new services and markets it offers.
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