As a customer, I am quite keen on getting 4G here in the UK – so have you ever wondered how keen the operators are to roll out 4G LTE in this country? Everything Everywhere has just published a report (as a part of its 4G Britain campaign) claiming that some 125,000 jobs will be ‘created or safeguarded’ by the arrival of 4G LTE. Whether you agree or not, it is an excellent PR push by them, especially with the UK economy have just sunk back into a recession. The report claims that 4G LTE will inject £5.5 billion of private investment into the economy by 2015 and add 0.5% to the UK GDP by 2020.
EE has been considering using its 1800MHz spectrum for its own LTE services, which other operators in the UK considers unfair and uncompetitive. Although Vodafone, Three and O2 were quick to point this report out as misleading and self-serving, I am not going to dwell on its accuracy/authenticity or explain the politics behind such a campaign here; whether or not this report convinces Ofcom to auction off the spectrum as soon as possible is another matter entirely.
Operators – including EE – need to have LTE strategies in place that are aligned with – and can manage – the rapid development of the market. To further strengthen their position, operators need to work with content providers even more closely to provide innovative services that will meet users’ requirements and, crucially, to which the user will attach value.
However, while doing so they need to make sure they provide high and reliable network performance which will be taken for granted by the consumers. We have forecast that the service revenues generated by 4G LTE mobile networks will grow rapidly once networks are launched globally – exceeding $265 billion by 2016 – but to attain these revenues, network reliability is essential.
But before you can get a network up and running, you need spectrum – whether new spectrum or, as proposed by EE, its existing 1800MHz allocation. So in this respect, it’s over to Ofcom…
Tags: 1800MHz spectrum, 4G Britain campaign, 4G UK, Everything Everywhere, LTE, Ofcom
Hi Nitin,
Many big communication infra companies and telecos are claiming tall heights about 4G/LTE especially from developing economy perspective. 3-4 years back the same story was there with 3G also. I remember, I questioned the scope of adoptivity of 3G technology in India. And I suspected the Teleco may not be able to make it successful. Even after 2-3 years of launching of 3G service in India. Blackberry and many mobile OEM bullish about there 2G phones. The new 9220 from blackberry has everything but it does not simply support 3G or LTE.
If we look at the launch of 4G/LTE services in India. The basic dongle price is 7K plus (nearly $150). The data plan is Rs 999 (almost 10 times more than 2G service). I agree you will have faster data rate and more GB to download. But from a basic phone perspective even 500MB or 1 GB data is sufficient. And why you want a customer to pay 10 times more for faster data rate transfer.
Similary the same issue with 3G data plan. which is still 4-5 times costly than 2G counter part. And hence, after spending billions of dollars investment in license fee and infrastructure. Telcos are not able to improve the APR/ User.
In my view the 3G or 4G/LTE ambitions of major Telco worldwide is just a Tactical sales. Not a long term strategic one.
Poor show of LTE will discourage mobile OEM from integrating LTE modem in handsets. And hence the LTE enabled handsets higher price will deprive the mass customers.
BWA licensee may not able to redcue the data plan due to non critical customer base. And hence the LTE service will be restriced to few hundred millions of subscribers at the most. New technology may possess strong competition to existing one.
This is just my observation. I may be wrong in my assessment.
Best regards,
Sanjeev
[...] I observed in one of my previous blogs: before you can get a network up and running, you need spectrum – whether new or existing. [...]