What’s Beyond 3G?
During the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, 4G technologies like Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX were among the top 10 topics for discussion in conference rooms and hallways.
Speaking at MWC, Carl-Henric Svanberg, president and CEO of Ericsson, highlighted the growth opportunities for W-CDMA and its high-speed packet access (HSPA) upgrade, saying there were 180 million W-CDMA subscribers while the number was growing by 6.5 million a month.
“In 2008, Ericsson expects to see 3G/HSPA networks rolled out in Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Russia, with India coming on board by end of the year,” Svanberg said. “Additionally, we see that in the 3G networks that we monitor in Europe data traffic now exceeds voice and accelerates quickly, from between 50% to 1,500% depending on the operator’s strategy.”
Still, all of the major infrastructure vendors and even some carriers were talking about 4G, and especially LTE. Verizon Wireless announced last fall that it would abandon the CDMA evolutionary path and target LTE for the future. Four more of the world’s largest carriers, Vodafone, China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo and AT&T Mobility, also have said LTE is in their future as well.
