Today's New York Times features an interesting story on the demonstration of a 4G wireless network by Samsung on a remote island in the Korean Peninsula.
There's been quite a bit of skepticism over the potential of 4G networks, especially since they will likely be very expensive to build and that most consumers will likely stick with DSL, cable modems, and the emergence of WiFi.
However, companies like Samsung, NTT DoCoMO, Qualcomm, and Ericsson are pouring big bucks into 4G, and they firmly believe is that its speed will be enough to convince people that it is worth looking into. The story points to an example where a network will be to transmit a gigabit every second.
Again, it really is up to the supporters of the technology to provide easy-to-understand information to its potential user base so a demand can be driven. If these companies are just throwing numbers around without any "real world" scenarios, then 4G might fizzle out before it gets started.
1. It's a bit too early to pour into this 3G is not even global. Most of the users of network data services I see are corporate users. The vast majority of the public seems confined to minutes and text messaging. Phone technology still has a while to go. We would probably have to phase out regular mobile phones as they are too primitive to use advanced features.
Posted at 4:16PM on Sep 26th 2006 by Luis Martinez