July - 2013 - issue > View Point
4G and its Pertinence in the Indian Telecom Sector
Arvind Bali
Director & CEO-Videocon Mobile Services
The Fourth Generation or 4G mobile network is a term used to describe the next evolutionary generation in the wireless communications space. It is capable of providing comprehensive IP based telecom solutions where voice, data and streamed multimedia can be provided to the users in a seamless manner and at much higher speeds than previous generation networks.
In technological parlance, presently there are two technologies which are capable of supporting the requirement of 4G deployment: WiMAX from the IEEE Forum and Long Term Evolution (LTE) from 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Forum. Many comparisons have been made between these technologies, but with no clear winner. Therefore, the deciding factor for commercial deployment of any of these technologies may be based on the business model.
In today’s ‘always connected’ environment, the new mobile broadband customer services like wireless broadband access, multimedia messaging services (MMS), video chat, mobile TV, HDTV content and digital video broadcasting; in addition to legacy vanilla services like voice and data need very high data rates and quality of service.
International 4G working groups have defined the following objectives for 4G wireless communications:-
- 4G is a spectrally efficient system/technology i.e., No of bits/sec/Hz High network capacity accommodating more users per cell and providing higher speeds to existing subscribers
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