LTE to the Party. UK lags behind on 4G

We’ve been stuck with 3G (Third Generation) networks in the UK since March 2003. Technology has moved on significantly in the last seven years, but unfortunately we have not. The USA, Japan and most of Europe have already signed deals and are set to have the next generation of mobile networks operational in under 12 months. In fact in Germany and India, we’ve already seen the government auction off the frequencies that are required to broadcast these networks to cellular providers. In short, we’re well behind the game.

Our current top speed on British networks is around 3Mb/s, and this has only really been taken advantage of in the past few years, since the introduction of the iPhone and similar high-end smartphones. We’ve become a dependent nation and the demand for high-speed data is growing by the day. 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a dynamic new network that promises to give us download speeds of up to 300 Mb/s. Make no mistake, this is going to have a huge impact on our daily lives; we’ll no longer need to find a computer terminal to watch video news, films and catch-up TV. We’ll be truly mobile, with some saying that all our data will be stored remotely in the cloud and accessed with ease from anywhere. We’ll have a door to every song, book, and film ever recorded within seconds and in high definition. Not to mention the impact it’s likely to have on mobile gaming. It’s also expected to make broadband and traditional broadcast TV defunct, as we’ll have quicker-than-broadband speeds everywhere we go. The face of the television industry could change dramatically moving to a model more closely resembling the BBC iPlayer and the Sky equivalent.

Why are we behind in these high technology, fast-moving times? It’s down to the launch of the last networks back in 2003. There was such a hype surrounding the new networks that the mobile providers overpaid for the frequencies, losing a large amount of money in the gamble. Remember those annoying Three adverts for video calling? It never really caught on because the technology didn’t deliver. We all marvelled at our friends’ phones showing pixelated, blurred faces moving on small screens, sounding like a cross between a tin helicopter and a gale-force wind. It didn’t work over 3G, this is why the latest iPhone only offers video calling through WiFi. The government auctioned five different frequencies back then, for a total amount of over £22bn. It was a staggering price and it doesn’t compare at all to the new 4G LTE networks that are going for around £4bn in India.

Let’s hope that the government and mobile operators can start to work together and not against each other. We need to avoid a similar situation to 10 years ago, where markets were grossly misjudged. We’ve got the technology, there’s a proven demand, so why not get the supply and we can start watching HD TV ubiquitously.