4G – when will the UK catch up?
With the explosion of smartphones and tablet PCs in the past few years, mobile internet usage has also sky rocketed. Hundreds of new apps are released each and every day and many of them are heavily internet reliant, which means that the current speeds we get over the 3G network (and its variants) are starting to become “too slow” for the day-to-day needs of tablet and smartphone users. It’s no wonder then, that mobile network operators in the UK are trying to push for it’s snappy implementation, but even that doesn’t come without controversy. Everything Everywhere (the outcome of T-Mobile & Orange’s merger) have kickstarted a movement, however competitors are worried that they’re trying to shoe-horn their way in and have ulterior motives after they proclaimed that they wanted to be the first company to be providing the technology in the UK.
To keep up with the moving trends, 4G has been designed from the ground up with the purpose of data transmission, whereas 2G/3G were designed primarily for voice transmission. This means that for tablet and smartphone users that want to watch bandwidth hungry videos in high resolutions, or want to download large files, they’re in luck since the faster speeds will mean less buffering and simply allow you to do more with your mobile gadgets on the web.
The above video explains the various differences between the technologies, the key difference however, is the speed. On 3G technology, you can expect a maximum throughput of 3.1Mbps, whereas 3.5G (also known as HSDPA) can give you up to 7.2Mbps. HSDPA+ is the next level up and here in the UK most providers have already brought in 14.4-21.1Mbps services with Three set to raise this to 42.2Mbps in the near future on their network. 4G networks take this one step further with attainable speeds of 100-300Mbps, which is much faster than what most households in the UK can get on their home connections. This is delivered over what is called LTE (Long Term Evolution) and in addition to the 300Mbps peak download speed, you can also expect upload speeds of up to 75 Mbps and latencies of roughly 5ms in the radio access network. Countries such as the US, Germany, Sweden, Norway, India and Denmark have already rolled out the technology and are enjoying the benefits. Videos on YouTube and similar sites show people in rural Indian areas getting 40Mbit download and 1Mbit upload which is truly incredible. Sweden has also had reports of 60Mbit download speeds and 6Mbit upload speeds, with very similar in Norway.
Closer to home, O2 have been testing their 4G network in areas of London and in Slough (where the company is headquartered) and have had great success, seeing speeds up to 150Mbit in certain sections of London. However don’t get too excited, the company say that users are more likely to see speeds of 40-50Mbit when the technology is rolled out nationwide, which is still extremely impressive for mobile internet and more in line with other countries offerings.
4G can only be a good thing for the UK’s tech-heads as they continuously crave more bandwidth for their tablet PCs and smartphones to catch up on their favourite TV program on the BBC iPlayer, or download the latest blockbuster from iTunes.