Cornish Villages 4G Trial Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Cornish Villages 4G Trial - Essay Example It is the aim of the Government to establish the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015 (BIS, 2010), and to meet the EC target for all citizens to have access to basic level of broadband of 2 Mbps by 2013 (EC, 2010). The wireless technology is envisioned to best benefit the ‘notspots’, or internet blackspots that cannot be reached by the traditional fibre-optic cable networks, since the 4G network relies on satellite dishes and the mobile phone network (McDonnell, 2011). The following discussion shall treat on the technical aspects, the social and user background, and the legal and policy frameworks that support and impact upon the UK broadband connectivity project. 2. Technical Background 4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards in the telecommunications industry, next to the 2G and 3G technologies. What the technology comprises exactly is difficult to define, and for a long time before the true 4G technology existed, its forerunners (LTE & WiMAX) were marketed as 4G. For instance, 4G has been described ‘as having peak speed requirements†¦ at 100 Mpbs for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 Gbps for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users,’ which definition, however, has been observed to applying to two technologies in particular. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) stated that the term 4G may also apply to its forerunners (LTE & WiMAX) and evolved 3G (HSPA+), which enabled said technologies to advertise themselves as 4G (Broadband Expert, 2011). Most of the networks that currently support 4G capability are backed by LTE (referring to Long Term Evolution) technology, particularly in the US and being introduced in the UK. This technology is theoretically rated to have a maximum download speed of 300 Mbps and top upload speed of 75 Mbps. In the US where LTE networks are in use, however, one can realistically expect download s peed to be within 6 and 12 Mbps due to simultaneous user traffic. The other technology, WiMAX, is currently used by US carrier Sprint and others, but is not planned to be used in the UK. According to Sprint, WiMAX is capable of real world download speed of between 3 and 6 Mbps. WiMax has a theoretical top download speed of 128 Mbps and 56 Mbps for upload speed (Broadband Expert, 2011). HSPA+, the evolved 3G which now markets as 4G technology, presents itself as a quick and easy, cost-effective near term solution for upgrading presently existing 3G networks. It is much slower than LTE, with theoretical top download speed of 21 Mbps and realistic speeds from 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps (Broadband Expert, 2011). More recently, the advanced versions of WiMAX and LTE have emerged in the market, which both have theoretical capability of 1 Gbps download (ISPreview, 2011). As implied by the differences between theoretical and real world speeds, nearly all broadband services suffer from highly variable speeds. The current range of download speed in the UK is between 1 and 2 Mbps. There are several advantages, in present-day 4G broadband technology, though. ‘Mobile Broadband is often described as being the only real alternative to fixed line services because it has the advantage of being both affordable and widely available, from almost anywhere, to a significant portion of the UK population’