Full speed ahead

BOSTON – There has been a lot of talk recently – and the subject was broached again at this week’s Mobile Internet World 2008 event – that the wireless industry should put the brakes on all the talk about 4G as carriers are just beginning to get a handle on their 3G deployments, and consumers are not yet clamoring for something more.
I say hogwash (and that is not a word I use flippantly as I am from north of the Mason-Dixon line). If history has shown us anything, it’s that many wireless operators and wireless consumers need to be pulled kicking and screaming into the future, and sometimes even into the present.
Carriers are more than happy to milk revenues from their existing networks for as long as possible, which makes sense. And for the most part, consumers are blind to the possibilities that advanced wireless technologies can offer them until they are bombarded with messages or they hear about it from their kids.
Whoever is responsible for generating hype for 4G should ratchet up the game immediately. We all know that it takes several years for a “G” to make it to market. Talk around 3G began in the late 1990s, and true deployments of 3G networks did not take shape until last year. So from that rationale, if we get cracking on hyping 4G today, we could see the fruits of that labor by the middle of the next decade. Sure, we have to nail down an official “4G” standard and then figure out if any of the technologies that are being tagged prematurely with the “4G” are actually going to be able to deliver. Once these important details are set, the industry can move on to getting carriers lined up for implementing launch plans and educating consumers on why 3G was a nice intermediary step, but what they really want is all the creamy goodness that 4G will provide.
So, enough of this dilly-dallying. I want my 4G now!