LTE: will it change the name of the game? And if so how, when and why?
by Howard Wilcox on April 2nd, 2009
So…exactly what is it about LTE that is exciting the mobile industry? Barely a day – or hang on – an hour – passes without another LTE news item. Yes, like all technological performance leaps, this is going to mean a step function increase in performance: mobile broadband speed will increase towards 100Mbit/s and beyond. Well surely that’s enough to get people excited?
Well..yes it is, especially if you compare it to typical speeds achieved today by both fixed broadband DSL and mobile broadband. But what does it mean for the user?
Yesterday I was checking the news (very carefully of course as it was 1st April !!) and one press release jumped out at me. Yahoo! announced the availability of Yahoo! Mobile, an “open and highly-personalised mobile starting point to the Internet, on both the mobile Web and as an Apple iPhone app.”
This development is another example of the way that the web experience that we expect from our fixed desktops is being replicated on mobile devices. Increasingly, anything we can do from our desktops, we’re able to do from our laptops and smart phones. With LTE, the user experience will be vastly improved.
Beyond this though, how else will LTE change our worlds? Well, if you’re a games player, listen up now. We can see an exciting future for broadband-enabled games consoles providing fast, anytime anywhere games connectivity. We can also see a range of further consumer electronics devices becoming connected: essentially LTE has the potential to bridge the gap between the mobile and consumer electronics worlds!
When and why? Well maybe I’ll come back to those issues over the next few weeks.
Tags: 3GPP, broadband, broadband forum, devices, dsl, games, gsm association, HSPA, mobile, mobile web, smart phones, yahoo
