Photo Illustration for TIME by VIKTOR KOEN
Is 4G The Future?
	3G was supposed to revolutionize mobile services, but failed to connect. Now get ready for the next generation of hype
	By WILLIAM BOSTON

Posted Sunday, October 5, 2003 14:05 GMT
Ask a European mobile-phone exec about fourth-generation cellular technology — 4G — and you can almost see them bite their tongue. These are the same folks, remember, who just five years ago couldn't stop talking up third-generation technology. The pitch went something like this: 3G services, with their high-speed wireless Internet access, would allow us to use our mobile-phone handsets to do everything from making home videos to surfing the Web. If investors would just give them billions of dollars, telecom operators would have the whole world plugged into 3G by, oh, about 2001.

They got their money, from credulous investors and governments, but they are nowhere near keeping their side of the bargain. About 1% of the world's more than 1 billion mobile phone users now have access to 3G technology — and what services they get are clunky and bug-ridden. "The time frame for 3G is still unclear," says Christoph Nettesheim, a partner with Boston Consulting Group in Berlin. "There aren't too many services available today which absolutely need it." No wonder the industry is so reluctant to talk about 4G, a leap in technology that could render all those hideously expensive 3G networks obsolete even before operators figure out how to make them work. "Those operators who are deploying 3G are worrying about what they're going to use them for," says Jeremy Green, a senior analyst with Ovum, a London-based communications research group. "It would be bad if they already started talking about 4G."

The lone exception: NTT DoCoMo. The Japanese operator was the only one to roll out a 3G service in 2001. It only has one million 3G subscribers, but it sees the need for more speed — so it's already pushing into 4G. The company is spending an initial $5.3 million to set up a 4G research facility in Beijing and aims to launch commercial service at 100 mbps — 50 times faster than 3G — by 2010. "We are experimenting, but can't disclose anything about it now," said Tokyo-based NTT DoCoMo spokesman Nobuo Hori. Not to be left behind, the Korean government has earmarked $100 million for 4G research through 2005, according to Ovum. Samsung, which has launched the Samsung 4G Forum, is also pushing the technology.

In Europe, 4G's champions are not the operators — Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Group, France Télécom and others are reluctant to talk about the next step before they clean up their 3G mess — but manufacturers of handsets and network equipment. In 2001, Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens formed the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) to explore 4G. The forum, which also includes Asian and North American companies, is studying the way people actually use technology in hopes of plotting a navigable course to the future. In the U.S., major operators haven't even deployed 3G: wary of the huge investment required and the lack of common wireless standards, they are deploying interim technology, dubbed 2.5G. Analysts suggest U.S. operators could skip 3G altogether and move to the next generation.

So what is 4G, anyway? The wwrf defines it as a network that operates on Internet technology, combines it with other applications and technologies such as wi-fi, and runs at speeds ranging from 100 mbps (in cell-phone networks) to 1 Gbits (in local wi-fi networks). Think of Tom Cruise in Minority Report — that scene where he is walking down an aisle and is "recognized" by local advertising networks, which offer products tailored to his consumer habits, in ads that only he can see and hear.

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