Quite honestly, we are as sick of talking about the advent of 3G in India as you probably are of reading about it. It’s a technology that has been around for the longest time and the country is simply too late in adopting it, as other nations are set to go in for superior wireless Internet advances, with the most prominent being 4G.
So when we came across this news from Live Mint that Motorola India is looking to test their 4G capacities, it stoked the very cockles of our dispassionate and cynical hearts.
For the uninitiated, 4G is – quite obviously – the fourth generation of cellular wireless technologies after 3G and 2G, that would eventually be capable of speeds of at least 100 Mbps. A number of factors make 4G formidable, such as better integration with IPv6, more spectrum efficiency, etc. 4G comprises several wireless technologies, two of which are currently rivaling for top billing: WiMAX and Long-Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is further bifurcated into two halves: 3GPP (current) and Advanced LTE (future).
It is this 3GPP LTE that Motorola India is looking to test. The company, which has tested LTE, is all set to start trial services of 4G that can offer 70Mbps download speeds on a mobile phone by the end of this year.
The company is likely to approach the Department of Telecom (DoT) for trial spectrum, said Subhendu Mohanty, a senior executive with Networks Mobility Business, Motorola India.
Asked whether Motorola is talking to operators, Mohanty said, “We would like to have trial with the players but the technology can also be tested on our own systems.”
As Live Mint points out, this development may discourage carriers from opting for 3G in the upcoming spectrum auction. But we would place all our money on the auction going off smoothly and India suffering from catch-up syndrome for a few more years to come.