Hype, smoke, mirrors and 3G
The announcement by GSA in July that “a new baseline of 7.2 Mbps with HSPA had been established for mobile broadband in the majority of commercial networks worldwide” has yet again raised the spectacle of an industry hyping it’s capabilities. Now the GSA says that “the next baseline for mobile broadband peak downlink data speed will be 21 Mbps HSPA”.
I have no doubt that 100 plus networks world wide have implemented support for 7.2 Mbps, but I have yet to achieve anything like that in any of the networks I have tried around the world.
Lets get real, a couple of cells in a network, optimised to support higher speeds does not constitue a commercial service, if networks could truly offer the claimed speeds, especially with unlimited download volumes, we would witness network collapse each and every day, they are not engineered to support the claim.
WiMax is no different, the dismal performance of some of the current commercial networks hides the success of those who have built credible business models and engineered quality networks. The LTE camp fights the WiMax camp, claiming a better technology, from a radio perspective, there is very little difference, but there is a lot of hype.
3G networks are crawling with self induced interference and as a result are incapable of supporting the current speeds or capacity claimed. Why then should we believe that they will meet the even tighter technical or commercial requirements imposed by LTE ?
Operators seem unwilling to fix the problem, they have neither the finances, resources nor the skills necessary. But the solutions are there, as the successful WiMax operators have shown. The way forward lies in the hands of two groups of people:
- the share holders of the networks asking the question of their company directors, “what is the network capable of, and why does it not live up to the hype” ?
- the regulators revoking licenses and refusing to re-farm spectrum until operators deliver on their hype
Spectrum is an asset belonging to the citizens of each nation, operators have been given access to tranches of this asset to provide telephony and broadband but have not delivered. Broadband is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity to businesses and individuals. Regulators and holders of spectrum should begin to deliver to expectation and hype before raising smoke and mirrors yet again.
