LTE marches forward

Telecommunications, never a market to sit still, is entering one of its most exciting phases over the next two years, with the introduction of services that will bring the dream of converged communications closer to reality.

The future of telecommunications relies on a number of factors, including the deployment of new technologies, the improvement of local and international bandwidth and a flood of new, sophisticated, handsets. All of these combined will enable an array of new services such as streaming media, music and video downloads as well as rich location-based Internet services.

The genesis of these services can already be seen in many ways, including Google Street View and location-based social networks such as FourSquare. Both of these rely on a number of aspects, including reasonably fast network access, phones with good display capabilities, high-speed network access and integrated GPS technology; these allow people not only to see where they are, but also to interact with their friends and family in new and interesting ways.

While the connected applications for mobile devices are likely to dominate the news over the next 12 months, as Apple, Google and Microsoft continue to improve the quality of the platforms that they offer to the public, the hard work will be needed by the networks to ensure they are ready to meet the demands their customers will place on them.

At present, the fastest way to connect to a mobile user is through an HSPA network, a technology that has certainly come into its own over the past 18 months. With HSPA potentially delivering 7.2Mbps of bandwidth and with upgrades to 14Mbps and eventually to 42Mbps, the need for efficient backhaul infrastructure has never been more pressing. Therefore, due to the needs from increased bandwidth required for upgrades to the existing HSPA networks, operators are also preparing for the next step in mobile communications, the deployment of systems based on long-term evolution (LTE) technologies.

LTE - also known in some circles as 4G - is already in the testing phase. The first deployments of the technology are scheduled to go live at the end of 2010, but mass adoption is only likely to happen in 2011 or 2012. In South Africa, operators will probably only launch commercial services in line with this, depending on availability of handsets.

Upgrading to LTE is critical for the telecommunications industry as it represents the next step forward in wireless technology.

Aingharan (Kutty) Kanagaratnam is head of Network Solutions for Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa.

Upgrading to LTE is critical for the telecommunications industry as it represents the next step forward in wireless technology. Not only will it offer operators the ability to deliver speeds of up to 100Mbps over a wireless link, but it marks the first time that operators using GSM technologies and those using CDMA technologies will be able to deploy a single standard technology, paving the way for true global roaming across all networks.

In addition, LTE is a much more efficient technology than existing 3G systems, meaning that operators will be able to get more customers onto a single base station than ever before. It has also been designed to be a more cost-effective technology to deploy, allowing operators to upgrade their networks at a much lower cost than was the case with the move to 3G.

LTE, as a standard, is also based entirely on IP - the technology that underlies the Internet - allowing for services such as VOIP and video conferencing to be routed across the network from one end to the other without any need for conversion from one transmission technology to another. This will improve the operators' ability to manage their networks, improving the quality of service they can offer to their customers.

The evolution of technology never stands still and as such, the next two years will see the introduction of new services and new technologies that will pave the steps taken over the past few years to new heights.