Why is 3g not good enough? What are the technology drivers that will give the
demand for 4G technology. Because if there is not the demand then the mobile network
operators will not invest, and we will not have 4G. Gartner put forward 5 technologies
that require 4G networks to make them work and in doing so change modern society.
- Video / TV There has been a long held dream to have live TV o a mobile
phone. This in addition to have off-air TV and videos services that should be
available on a mobile phone via the mobile network. The demand is for
standard definition TV or Video to be available on a mobile device attached to
a mobile network.
- Office Anywhere For small organisations the provision of fixed office
space and facilities can be costly, and indeed within larger firms much of the
office space is not occupied 9 to 5. Add this to the need to work away from
base for many individuals provides a requirement to allow mobile office
software. The mobile networks need to be able to support disk storage such
as Drop box, one drive etc. Additionally the 4G mobile network should support
online office software such as Google Docs.
- Music in the cloud There is a revolution in music, away from physical
items such as CDs or vinyl to streaming. The 4G mobile network will support
the streaming of music from organisations such as Spotify, or Apple Music.
- IoT. The growth and rollout of IoT requires network capacity and with the
mobility demands for many applications this will have to be a mobile network.
Health or Fitness Apps have a large mobile upload requirement. Additionally
IoT devices can be away from the traditional wired networks and 4G can plug
that gap.
- Social Multimedia Facbook Twitter, Instagram and other social media
platforms are with us all the time and everywhere. Many users wish up upload
antime and anyplace. The 4G network needs to support this demand.