The downside of LTE expectations

While the wireless industry should be excited about the possibilities that advanced generation network technologies will bring to consumers and enterprises – and the revenues that all members of the ecosystem will enjoy from those advanced services – industry should remember that technological advances rarely come easily and quickly.
It’s fun to get excited about the possibility of surfing the Internet at lightning speed from a netbook, at the beach, on the lawn or deep inside a basement building in an urban corridor surrounded by concrete and steel. But for all the talk of fourth-generation protocols, I’ve yet to hear many people, even usually cautious CEOs, temper anyone’s expectations. And yet, if history has taught us anything, it’s that RF is temperamental in its early iterations. It’s generally understood that WAP was sold as a service that would let consumers surf the Web from second-generation handsets. It didn’t and the phrase “WAP is crap” became an industry catch phrase. Later, hopes were high for UMTS, but when it finally launched, Vodafone was promising speeds of 64 kilobits per second, which was less than EDGE and barely better than GPRS, and far short of what the 3GPP partnership was touting. Speeds eventually increased to 384 kbps, but it wasn’t until the HSPA advancements that UMTS really became 3G. And even though WiMAX does seem to offer fast connectivity, the real test will come when large numbers of customers are using the networks.
I’m as excited as anybody about the next advance in wireless telephony, and we all know from the rapid success of the iPhone that one piece of the puzzle can disrupt everything else, but we also know that deployments are long-term affairs. As I write this, AT&T Mobility is working 24/7 to bring better 3G service to Manhattan and San Francisco, two cities that have embraced data downloads over smartphones. The carrier said it has been slowed in improving those networks because of zoning issues and microcells that need to be upgraded. AT&T Mobility head Ralph de la Vega noted that heavy data users need to be educated, and even incented, about how they can reduce their data use!
In theory, video and constant audio downloads shouldn’t impact LTE networks, but again, no one knows how hungry 4G users will be for data and which applications they will embrace. In the meantime, industry still needs devices, proper backhaul rollouts, billing strategies, etc., in place before LTE becomes the force it is expected to become.
Today’s wireless operators have decades of experiences to draw upon as they roll out new technologies. And make no mistake, these technologies will live up to the hype eventually. But in the beginning stages of deployments, it’s wise to temper those expectations with a heavy dose of reality.