Is 4G The Future?

http://www.time.com/time/europe/next/4g.html

3G was supposed to revolutionize mobile services, but
failed to connect. Now get ready for the next
generation of hype  
   
By WILLIAM BOSTON  
   
Posted Sunday, October 5, 2003 14:05 GMT
Ask a European mobile-phone exec about
fourth-generation cellular technology — 4G — and you
can almost see them bite their tongue. These are the
same folks, remember, who just five years ago couldn't
stop talking up third-generation technology. The pitch
went something like this: 3G services, with their
high-speed wireless Internet access, would allow us to
use our mobile-phone handsets to do everything from
making home videos to surfing the Web. If investors
would just give them billions of dollars, telecom
operators would have the whole world plugged into 3G
by, oh, about 2001.

They got their money, from credulous investors and
governments, but they are nowhere near keeping their
side of the bargain. About 1% of the world's more than
1 billion mobile phone users now have access to 3G
technology — and what services they get are clunky and
bug-ridden. "The time frame for 3G is still unclear,"
says Christoph Nettesheim, a partner with Boston
Consulting Group in Berlin. "There aren't too many
services available today which absolutely need it." No
wonder the industry is so reluctant to talk about 4G,
a leap in technology that could render all those
hideously expensive 3G networks obsolete even before
operators figure out how to make them work. "Those
operators who are deploying 3G are worrying about what
they're going to use them for," says Jeremy Green, a
senior analyst with Ovum, a London-based
communications research group. "It would be bad if
they already started talking about 4G."

The lone exception: NTT DoCoMo. The Japanese operator
was the only one to roll out a 3G service in 2001. It
only has one million 3G subscribers, but it sees the
need for more speed — so it's already pushing into 4G.
The company is spending an initial $5.3 million to set
up a 4G research facility in Beijing and aims to
launch commercial service at 100 mbps — 50 times
faster than 3G — by 2010. "We are experimenting, but
can't disclose anything about it now," said
Tokyo-based NTT DoCoMo spokesman Nobuo Hori. Not to be
left behind, the Korean government has earmarked $100
million for 4G research through 2005, according to
Ovum. Samsung, which has launched the Samsung 4G
Forum, is also pushing the technology.

In Europe, 4G's champions are not the operators —
Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Group, France Télécom and
others are reluctant to talk about the next step
before they clean up their 3G mess — but manufacturers
of handsets and network equipment. In 2001, Alcatel,
Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens formed the
Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) to explore 4G.
The forum, which also includes Asian and North
American companies, is studying the way people
actually use technology in hopes of plotting a
navigable course to the future. In the U.S., major
operators haven't even deployed 3G: wary of the huge
investment required and the lack of common wireless
standards, they are deploying interim technology,
dubbed 2.5G. Analysts suggest U.S. operators could
skip 3G altogether and move to the next generation.

So what is 4G, anyway? The wwrf defines it as a
network that operates on Internet technology, combines
it with other applications and technologies such as
wi-fi, and runs at speeds ranging from 100 mbps (in
cell-phone networks) to 1 Gbits (in local wi-fi
networks). Think of Tom Cruise in Minority Report —
that scene where he is walking down an aisle and is
"recognized" by local advertising networks, which
offer products tailored to his consumer habits, in ads
that only he can see and hear. 

The 4G world will be about much more than handsets.
The technology, Alex Lightman says, will give birth to
a whole new dress code. You might call Lightman the
Gucci of wearable computers — he's one of the few
people who dares to openly fantasize about the 4G
future. He's even written a book about it: Brave New
Unwired World (John Wiley & Sons; 320 pages). He is
tireless in his efforts to get industry chieftains and
global regulators to forget 3G and focus on the next
wave. "4G is not just a technology; it's a lifestyle,"
he says over a cell phone from his home in Los
Angeles. "It's one of those things that when no one
company can own it, no one company can control it."

In his day job, Lightman runs a company called Charmed
Technology, which makes wearable computers — like the
CharmBadge, a palm-size device that creates
personalized Web pages tracking a person's activity at
a conference to help network with other delegates. In
Lightman's vision, a citizen of the 4G world will be
wired from head to toe: from sunglasses that include
computer screens and miniature digital-video cameras
to shirts made of a flexible high-tech plastic that
double as TV screens. The technology won't just allow
us to access the Internet, it will make us a part of
it, as mobile nodes in the worldwide network.

Lightman's enthusiasm for 4G may seem a throwback to
the gaga years of Internet hype that ended in the
technology bust and global recession. But since it's
impossible to tell how 4G will pan out, it's probably
a mistake to dismiss his vision out of hand. Green, at
Ovum likens the current state of play on 4G to the
early years of the World Wide Web: nobody could have
imagined then how much the Internet would change the
world. "What we're going to be doing with 4G," he
says, "is something that nobody even knows about right
now."

The WWRF forecasts European deployment of 4G by 2011,
according to analysts. At the moment, few European
operators care to peer that far into the future: their
eyes are fixed on the more urgent matter of making 3G
work. Most 3G networks won't be launched until next
year. And the few that are already in operation serve
as cautionary tales. The 3 network, majority-owned by
Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa, is launching 3G
operations in nearly a dozen countries and has been
plagued with problems. In Italy, the first set of 3G
phones, from Japan's NEC, were not only expensive — at
$720, they cost 10 times as much as some regular cell
phones — they didn't work very well and tended to get
hot. (The new generation of 3G phones are going for
around j300.) "There were problems on video calls with
heat dispersion, but it's been resolved," says
Vincenzo Novari, the CEO of 3's Italian operation.
"The battery life is weak if you use a lot of 3G
applications."

Amid the bad press and customer complaints, 3 started
giving the phones away in Italy. Customers who pay a
j99 connection fee, spend €30 a month and receive at
least 60 minutes of free calls are eligible for a free
phone. Novari says the problem now is getting enough
phones to meet demand. "If we had 600,000 phones this
summer we would have sold them all, but we only had
300,000," says Novari. "We will meet our goal of 1
million subscribers within our first year of service."
Novari says profit margins on data calls — like video
and Internet access — are 80%, more than twice the
margin in current 2G networks.

Novari also sees evidence that 3G is changing the
cellular business. His company is marketing heavily to
couples and families who use video conferencing to
stay in touch. In the past three weeks, he says,
135,000 soccer clips were downloaded by 3's video goal
service. "The handsets will change next year because
we now have a multimedia platform," says Novari. But
3's video service still needs to prove itself.
Customers have complained about shoddy service, bad
video and the high price. Other 3G customers say their
calls get cut off when they move out of the
limited-range 3G networks and into a 2G zone. The
problem hasn't been resolved.

To make matters worse, a new study published in the
Netherlands last week suggests signals from 3G
networks could be a health hazard. People in a test
group exposed to 3G signals "felt tingling sensations,
got headaches and felt nauseous," a spokeswoman from
the Dutch Economics Ministry said. It's too soon to
say what impact the study will have on demand for 3G
services, says Bram Oudshoorn, spokesman for Royal KPN
NV, the dominant Dutch telecommunications company. "It
was good that they did a study, because it must be
clear that 3G is not a hazard," he says. "This study
is not conclusive, however. It is good that the
government said it will do further research."

After the overhyped birth of 3G, it's easy to see why
there is so much attention focused on the shortcomings
of the embryonic services. And like many people in the
industry, Motorola 3G specialist John Thode says
that's a reason to resist hyping 4G. "I think of 4G as
a kind of convergence of technologies," he says.
"There isn't one of these technologies that isn't
already here today. It's not something new and
different," he says. But if it works really well, it
may seem that way.




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