As manic as LTE adoption has been in the US, it could be triggering a full-fledged generational rift in Japan. NTT is cutting prices for fiber-to-the-home internet access by as much as 34 percent in the midst of falling landline subscriptions, and Australia’s Delimiter hears from unofficial sources at the provider that the cuts may be in response to youth being enamored with 4G on their phones. The tipsters believe that many of the younger set are picking one expensive LTE plan, even with data caps, instead of paying for two services; a price drop would be an attempt to keep at least a few of these wireless rebels onboard. Take the assertions with a grain of salt when there’s no official statements to match, but there’s no doubt that 4G demand is booming when NTT’s own DoCoMo just landed its 7 millionth Xi contract. We only wish American wired and wireless carriers would be so accommodating of our temptation to cut the cord.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Networking, Internet, Mobile
AT&T may have its sights set on connecting the home, but its archrival Verizon Wireless has a more mobile target in mind: the connected car. It has long talked up its dream of connecting anything with wheels and a motor to its LTE network, but in recent weeks it has gotten even more aggressive in the automotive space.
VZW’s parent company Verizon Communications revealed Friday it is buying up Hughes Telematics, which powers M2M applications in both consumer and commercial vehicles. On Wednesday, Verizon announced the formation of the 4G Venture Forum for Connected Cars, whose mission is exactly what that name implies: finding ways to use LTE to power future automotive telematics applications.
BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Toyota have all joined the Forum, but the Big 3 automakers from Detroit are all absent. That’s surprising given how closely Verizon has worked with U.S. automakers on concept vehicles and apps in the past and considering how aggressive Ford and General Motors have been in the connected car space.
Their absence may just be a matter of timing – the venture just got off the ground today – but it also might be attributable to the fact that U.S. automakers’ visions for the connected car aren’t entirely aligned with Verizon’s. They don’t necessarily want LTE in the car – at least not embedded in the dash.
While U.S. automakers embrace the idea of embedded radios for emergency services and vehicle-to-vehicle telematics, when it comes to infotainment they would rather you brought along your own connectivity. Two of the biggest connected car platforms, Ford’s Sync and Cadillac’s CUE, depend on drivers using their own smartphones to link their apps to the network.
The logic is sound: consumer vehicles have long replacement cycles. Meanwhile consumers trade in their smartphones for more sophisticated models every 18 months. Any radio, processor or platform technology an automaker embeds in a car could become obsolete within a few years. As a new technology, LTE will have a long overall shelf life, but like any wireless technology its performance will improve gradually. New smartphones will be able to take advantage of those improvements in speed, capacity and efficiency, while the radios embedded in the chassis of your car will not.
Embedded connectivity will come – just not in a 4G guise
Many governments are requiring that all future cars have some form of embedded connectivity for safety reasons. And it looks that embedded M2M modules will come standard in all future electric vehicles to assist with power management. It seems like those trends would represent a big opportunity for carriers to entrench their 4G services into the dashboard. But don’t hold your breath, Airbiquity marketing VP Leo McCloskey told me in a recent interview.
Airbiquity provides technology for connected car platforms, and McCloskey believes that automakers will tackle embedded connectivity in the car with the barest of radios. GSM/EDGE networks will have more than enough juice as well as the necessary coverage to supply basic emergency call and location services and enable key applications such as remote door unlocking and tamper alerts. The big bandwidth infotainment apps, however, will continue to rely on the smartphone as a conduit, McCloskey said. “They’re going to keep in-car connectivity very low speed,” he said.
If the LTE-connected car never comes to pass, Verizon won’t be able to rake in millions of new 4G subscriptions, but it still stands to benefit plenty. The data may be piped through the phone, but these apps will still need LTE-levels of bandwidth to feed the rear-seat video monitors, 3D navigation systems, surround-sound stereos and other infotainment apps making their way into vehicles. It’s one connection, but a connection that consumes many more gigabytes.
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Key technologies for the smart cityLTE-Advanced: what it is and isn’tUpdated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010–2015
By now, we’re pretty familiar with the term 4G LTE. But that in and of itself is somewhat surprising. It took 12 years for GSM wireless technology to reach one billion connections, and WCDMA took 11 years. But LTE will hit the same mark in just seven years of existence, according to a new report by Strategy Analytics.
If you’re not familiar with the term, a brief explanation would be that LTE (or Long Term Evolution) is a fourth-generation wireless standard that provides users with faster data speeds, all the while making more efficient use of a carrier’s wireless spectrum.
We’ve already seen a plethora of LTE devices hit the U.S. market, and now that the technology is established in major markets like Korea, Japan, and the U.S., the growth trajectory for LTE will only continue to rise. Strategy Analytics expects over 90 million LTE connections to be activated before the end of 2012, and that figure should reach the 1 billion mark by 2017. This is far and away the fastest implementation of new wireless technology to date.
At the same time, however, previous technologies were born into a world with far fewer overall connections. LTE launched with over 6 billion connections in existence in the world, whereas CDMA was first revealed at a time when less than 1 billion connections had been activated.
“The race is on for mobile operators to reduce cost per GB to match the rate at which revenue per GB is falling,” said director of service provider analysis Sue Rudd, in a prepared statement. “LTE is one of the key tools to deliver this improvement, with the early volume in LTE devices an encouraging sign for operators looking to maximize return on their LTE investments.”
To her point, we certainly wouldn’t mind a reduction in data costs, considering that we’re more data hungry than ever and unlimited data has basically been nixed across the boards.
According to Ma Bell, AT&T covers 97 percent of all Americans. Of course, that's including those “one bar of EDGE” places that are uncovered so far as reality's concerned, but regardless of all that — there's no denying that AT&T's LTE launch is on the subdued side. With Verizon rolling out five times more LTE markets this month than AT&T is even launching with, the country's largest GSM carrier definitely has some catching up to do. Regardless of the standings, the company appears to have (quietly) gone live with five LTE markets as of today, with Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio, Dallas / Fort Worth and Houston getting first dibs. The source link below takes you to the new coverage map, as well as to a promise from the carrier to expand “4G LTE” (not to be confused with the other 4G, more accurately known as HSPA+) to 15 major metropolitan areas by the year’s end. Notice how rural areas aren’t mentioned, despite plenty of grandstanding near D.C.? Don’t worry, guys — it’s just Rethinking Possible.
[Thanks, Marcus]
AT&T flips 4G LTE live, nearly 97 percent of America wonders where the party is originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
AT&T may have its sights set on connecting the home, but its archrival Verizon Wireless has a more mobile target in mind: the connected car. It has long talked up its dream of connecting anything with wheels and a motor to its LTE network, but in recent weeks it has gotten even more aggressive in the automotive space.
Many governments are requiring that all future cars have some form of embedded connectivity for safety reasons. And it looks that embedded M2M modules will come standard in all future electric vehicles to assist with power management. It seems like those trends would represent a big opportunity for carriers to entrench their 4G services into the dashboard. But don’t hold your breath, Airbiquity marketing VP Leo McCloskey told me in a recent interview.
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