Rating: Is it 2G? 3G? or 4G? it’s certainly not what 3 has got
This latest fight over 4G in the UK highlights an essential piece of technology which everybody seems to have forgotten. You can be literally anywhere in the world and if you pick up a telephone, you can talk to everybody, everywhere. Now we have Everything Everywhere (formerly Orange/T-Mobile UK) in the UK proving that the exact opposite is true with mobile technology. They are proposing to use spectrum supposedly provided for 2G to offer 4G services. It’s a harsh business climate out that and GoMo News doesn’t blame Everything Everywhere at all for trying to get a commercial advantage over its rivals. It does, however, make something of a mockery of the whole mobile industry when yet another yawning chasm is opened in the quest for a truly global telephone network which would actually work.Let’s take a look at what exactly Everything Everywhere is proposing. It’s noticed that it is technically possible to run genuine 4G services over the 1800 MHz spectrum.
And apparently the operator has already proved this point by undertaking a trial in Cornwall.
Which is great except that up until now, everybody had assumed that 4G in the UK would be carried over 800 MHz.
Now that bit of the airwaves (800 MHz) has been freed up by closing down the associated broadcast TV services.
And the UK government has definite plans to flog off the former TV slots to the UK’s mobile phone operators in late 2012.
So the fact that Everything Everywhere will probably get the go-ahead to offer 4G over its existing spectrum way before any kind of spectrum auction is cheesing off its existing rivals.
Vodafone and O2 have good reason to be p*ss*d off. Although, technically speaking, GoMo News believes that both do actually have a bit of the 1800 MHz allocation.
The biggest loser is 3 UK which very definitely is stuck with 3G only spectrum at 2100 MHz or 2.1 GHz to you.
The whole situation on the spectrum front has been muddied well and truly by our North American cousins original stance that 1900 MHZ or PCS was 3G unlike Europe’s 1800 MHz or DCS which was 2G but has suddenly become 4G.
The biggest irony? 4G was supposed to be uniting the mobile industry because the technology employed to provide 4G – LTE- has been adopted by the opposing 2G camps – GSM and cdmaOne.
Now this facade is well and truly exposed as full of holes. And GoMo News won’t even go into the fact that China has been adopting its own variant of 4G in the form of TD-LTE.
One mobile phone that offers everything, everywhere in the world? No chance.
