4G Emerging Technologies

The following sections describe each of these emerging technologies in more detail to give you a basic awareness of their power to change the current wireless model.

Wireless Broadband Networks

3G managed to move the needle a bit on bandwidth (about 500Kbps, or less than half a typical cable modem on average). But the improvements were too little to keep pace with user expectations and the need to support bandwidth-hungry rich-media applications. So in the interim, wireless operators have rolled out patchworks of 3G and “3.5G” capabilities such as HSPA and EVDO, with speeds up to 14Mbps. But these technologies were inefficient stopgap solutions to a larger wave of demand for high-quality mobile broadband services. Users are still unable to get broadband connectivity and internetworking with other users and devices outside of a small set of locations (hot spots) and situations.