Much needed
At first glance an apparently expensive study that concluded 4G is faster than 3G seems like one of those examples of bureaucrats making work out of nothing, to justify their existence. But telco regulator Ofcom seems to have commissioned this report to give us a more precise indication of what we can really expect from 4G.
The study was undertaken by wireless consultancy Real Wireless, and the headline finding was that early 4G networks (which will begin rolling out in the UK in 2013) will offer over three times the capacity on the same spectrum as the 3G networks being currently used.
Dr Stephen Unger, Ofcom CTO said: "4G mobile technologies will be able to send more information than 3G, for a given amount of spectrum. This increased efficiency means that 4G networks will be able to support increased data rates and more users.
"The research that we commissioned indicates that early 4G mobile networks with standard configurations will be 3.3 times (230%) more spectrally efficient than today's standard 3G networks. To put this in context, a user on an early 4G network will be able to download a video in around a third of the time it takes today on a 3G network. It is anticipated that this efficiency will increase to approximately 5.5 times (450%) by 2020."
The ultimate point of this research seems to have been to work out whether 4G will solve our growing bandwidth problems, with most people using the mobile Internet regularly these days. It looked at the various iterations of LTE as well as WiMAX.
The conclusion was that, despite all these nice increases in spectral efficiency, we will still need more spectrum to accommodate all this mobile data. A lot of this will come from the auction of new spectrum at 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz in 2012, which is apparently equivalent to three quarters of the mobile spectrum in use today. You can read the full monty here.
Ofcom has been on a bit of a mission recently. On Tuesday it put out a call for consumers to contact it if they've received any unexpectedly high mobile, landline or broadband bills in the past year. Then yesterday it announced it has applied to parliament for stronger powers to fine companies it accuses of scams and mis-selling on the spot.
