Three of the top four wireless carriers – AT&T Mobility, Sprint and T-Mobile US – have promised gigabit wireless speeds will begin this year. That’s incredible.
We know how gigabit speeds on the wireline side has been astounding, but to deliver these speeds wirelessly will be another giant step. The only carrier that hasn’t said anything is Verizon Wireless. Why not?
So, what does all this excitement mean and when can you expect gigabit speeds where you live and work? There is no solid answer to that question, with each carrier set to upgrade according to their own plan and on their own schedule.
The three carriers aare promising to begin offering gigabit speeds in 2017, but that means it will roll out in market after market over a period of time. No carrier can flip a switch and upgrade the whole network at once. It takes time and each carrier may have a different plan for which cities and in which order.
2G to 3G to 4G and now to 5G
This is the way the wireless world continues to upgrade. Just like with the move from 2G to 3G to 4G and now to 5G, it takes time. Today, carriers focus on 4G, but that does not mean their entire network is 4G. There are many places around the country still operating at 3G speeds. In fact, 2G is just starting to be shut down. Upgrading speed takes several years and if you are lucky you live in a city that is early on the upgrade list.
Ultra-fast gigabit speeds will blow most customers away. It will allow you to do so much more, much faster. It will help businesses in other industries grow. This is the path wireless networks have been on for the last couple decades, always upgrading to a faster and better wireless data connection.
AT&T says they have tested speeds up to 14 gigabits per second, which is incredibly fast. Don’t expect this in the marketplace at first, but this shows the direction the industry is heading.
Many people will be able to save money by cancelling their wired internet connection at home or in the office and use their smartphones or a dedicated wireless connection. In fact, wireless will become a competitor to the wired internet connection where gigabit speeds are available. It will be interesting to see how the market share changes.
IoT, cloud, AI and M2M demand faster speeds
The pace of growth is accelerating and I expect that to continue in 2017. Evolving technologies like the “internet of things,” cloud, artificial intelligence and machine-to-machine will all be using the wireless networks to communicate. This means wireless growth is continuing and every carrier needs to be a player in this new space.
Technologies and companies like PayPal with FinTech; IBM Watson with AI; all the handset makers with their voice assistance like Apple Siri, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana; home AI like Amazon.com’s Alexa and Google Home are exploding and they all need wireless and wireline networks.
We are still in the very early days of their evolution, and they will continue to use more bandwidth and require more speed with wireless at the center of it all. This is a unique growth opportunity for the wireless industry as every other industry moves toward these technologies and communicates wirelessly.
Why then is Verizon not in the gigabit race?
There is something strange however with all this chatter about faster speeds. Where is Verizon? They have been very quiet; too quiet if you ask me. They have been too quiet for a while now, and as gigabit speeds are rolling out on the wireline side, they are quiet there too.
That is starting to bother me. Every other carrier is touting their advancements. Why does Verizon seem to have fallen off the growth track on both the wireline and wireless side? And will it continue to get worse as time goes by or will they recover? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Wireless gigabit expanding growth opportunities for wireless carriers
Any way you slice it, wireless is becoming more important to us and the way we live and work. Faster speeds were not a big deal several years ago since we didn’t have things that needed such speed. Today however, we do. Today we use wireless to search the web, use social sites, watch video clips, movies and live television. Today we use smartphones, tablets and laptops everywhere.
Today, we expect to be always on, always connected. And we are still at the very beginning of this incredible growth wave that we will experience over the next several years thanks to new applications and faster wireless data speeds.
Jeff Kagan is a wireless analyst, telecom analyst, technology analyst, consultant, speaker and author.
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