3G to 4G-The WiMAX & LTE War

The Indian telecom sector is on a high surge. Gartner had predicted that the Indian mobile subscriber base will cross 771 million by 2013. In fact, the total telecom subscriber base for India has already reached 638.05 million subscribers with a tele-density of 54.10. Additionally, Indian mobile operators have collectively added 16.9 million new mobile subscribers and hence the total subscriber base jumped to 601.22 million.

The opening of the 3G spectrum is further expected to boost the fast growing telecom sector. The market will definitely heat up with innovative products and services which would be beneficial for the customers as well for the service providers. And in this rapidly expanding market, companies with new and unique solutions will emerge as the leaders.

3G Scenario and Perception

There is more to 3G than the faster internet access and downloads, excess data limit, and better video and picture quality. The technology and the capital involved in providing 3G services to the customers is complex. In fact, 3G operations require large scale investment and are highly risky due to increasingly diversified and segmented requirements. Additionally, the investment patterns will lead to more diversification in the market.There would be more direct investment from shareholder and strategic investor, borrowing from local and international financial market, vendor financing from suppliers and revenue generation from current asset like tower.

In addition, it would be necessary for the service providers to have a robust network to roll out the 3G services where the scalability of the network would become extremely important. So as to provide seamless services to its customers, it would become increasingly more critical for the service providers to have the correct infrastructure and network, and the appropriate amount of capital.

Even though 3G offers much higher bit rates as compared to 2G, there are other technologies that enable the service providers to cater to the ever-increasing demand for fast wireless broadband. These kinds of technically innovation can not only improved the ROI but can also cut down the costs of deploying mobile broadband networks. All these demands and economical sense have led the service providers to 4G technologies.

From 3G to 4G--- To be WiMAX or To be LTE

Although we are in at 3G, the world is going on at 4G. The technologies for 4G would be WiMAX and LTE, and the lobbying for which would be a better technology is full on. There are lots of similarity between WiMAX and LTE. Both are a wireless technology very suitable for emerging markets like India where wireline infrastructure is severely lacking. In addition, both technologies use the same fundamental wireless standard — known as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing).

The future of the mobile broadband market will be shaped by LTE and WiMAX which will enable 4G wireless data networks to deliver the internet to your mobile phone at speeds that would make the home broadband connection seem obsolete.

The proponents of WiMAX claim that large-scale investments are not required to provide broadband connectivity using it. It seems to be a much better solution and can meet the user's demand for wireless data services and also enable the operators to tap the new business growth areas. WiMAX ís ultra-high spectrum efficiency allows operators to provide users with more options like internet browsing, streaming media, video on demand and so on.

On the other hand, LTE (3GPP Long Term Evolution) and can provide the capacity to support an explosion in demand for connectivity from a new generation of consumer devices tailored to those new mobile applications. It will also enable fixed to mobile migrations of Internet applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP), video streaming, music downloading, mobile TV and many others. LTE itself is a new paradigm in access, with a new modulation technique, OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex), and antenna technology, MIMO (Multiple
Input Multiple Output).

WiMAX offers peak wireless data speeds of up to 6 Mbps on the downstream and 1 Mbps for sending data upstream. On the other hand, LTE has download speeds of 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 50 Mbps.
The above instance itself picture LTE as a better technology, but the only glitch is that currently WiMAX is in operational mode and LTE is still a theoretical concept. And that availability makes it a winner.

Conclusion

WiMAX and LTE would help the service providers to provide wireless broadband services that would boost their revenue. It would enable faster downloads, video sharing and Mobile TV with more channels and great quality. As mentioned earlier, Wimax and LTE are technically similar but the difference lies in the expected time to market and legacy.

Even the Indian telecom market is on great high but there still is a huge market that is waiting to be tapped; and technologies like WiMAX and LTE can help reach places where wireline can never go and enable the users to experience wireless broadband services in a whole new manner.

Kaushik Phukan