In 4G we trust

So we have this again, LTE is being referred to as 4G. Firstly, this is not really news because i mentioned this in September. Check the post here. Also Verizon is not the first operator to commit to LTE future. AT&T has said the same before them. Regarding the terminology i said earlier that LTE is 3.9G, see here. But 4G sounds better than 3.9G and will confuse ordinary people less so...

Anyway, an article titled "3G bad; 4G better be better" came to my attention:

Not surprisingly, tech-savvy young adults are frustrated by the speed and connectivity limitations of 3G networks and expect both better speed and more reliable connectivity when 4G arrives, according to focus groups in the U.S. and Japan queried by Nortel and the consultant firm CSMG ADVENTIS.

“There was uniform dissatisfaction with today’s UMTS or 3G networks, whether that was because the feeds just weren’t good enough, the applications that they were running, like video, just weren’t good enough.

They look forward in the next generation of technologies to something that can deliver their expectations for these applications in ways that are easy, friendly and useful,” said Scott Wickware, vice president of wireless networks for Nortel.

Wickware said that the focus groups, based in New York City, Seattle and Washington, D.C. in the U.S. and Tokyo and Osaka in Japan, had similar unhappy feelings about their 3G wireless services.

“We expected the Japanese to have a different perspective on this because they’re perceived to be the most tech-savvy nation on the planet, but 25-year-old businesspeople in both countries seem to want the same thing,” Wickware said.

Not coincidentally, what they want is what Nortel has been preaching: “this hyper-trend called mega-connectivity that says everything that could be connected to the network and would be beneficial to the network will be connected to the network,” Wickware said. “We couldn’t have scripted it any better because the feedback came back almost universally saying the same thing.”

The feedback also indicated that users did not necessarily want a single multi-use device but preferred multiple devices connected to the network.
“They don’t want just the mobile phone connected to the network or their PC, they want their camera, their MP3 player, their vehicle, they want everything. I think the trending is a single or dual-purpose device is what a lot of people want,” he said.

Overall, he said, respondents are looking for more from future network services.

“We asked them a wide variety of questions about what they wanted from 4G. We didn’t define 4G for them and lead them down the path to see what they had to say, but left it pretty wide open so we were getting top-of-mind stuff that wasn’t influenced by our views,” he said.

Long time back i remember being so happy with Dial up Internet Connection but now i am not too happy with my 8M broadband. So i suppose the same goes for other technologies.