Fighting for Cheaper 4G  

When 3G services were introduced, big mobile phone companies had
to pay around £100bn which made the launch of 3G harder.

Now when all the major leading mobile phone companies are
preparing for the launch of the next generation of fast wireless
broadband, the same bill issue might occur.

This is the reason for which six of the world's leading mobile
phone companies have joined their powers to take the steps to
avoid a repeat bill of such amount. The companies intend to
lobby governments, regulators and the rest of the industry to
make sure that the next generation of fast wireless broadband
which is called 4G, is not as expensive to introduce as its
predecessor.

The idea is that the mobile phone industry looks to broadband
internet access as a new way to make money. O2, owned by
Telefonica, bought the residential internet service provider Be
Broadband, a move that will allow O2 to offer converged mobile
and fixed-line services.

Most players in the industry think that the future is mobile
broadband and believe that "the convergence strategy seems to be
a defensive strategy as the major mobile phone companies are
scared that the fixed-line operators are coming after their
business." (Jim Hyde, head of T-Mobile's UK business).

BT seems to be on the side of converged mobile and fixed-line
phone services and offered a package with interactive TV,
videophoning and other integrated home media services including
video on demand, voice-over-internet phone calls and wireless
broadband.

T-Mobile, fair to its strategy, is launching an upgrade to its
existing equipment that will make its 3G network four times
faster. The service will cost £17 a month for up to one gigabyte
of web surfing while Vodafone that launched a similar service
but with a quarter of the capacity will charge £25.

Although these new services seem overwhelming on the market,
they are only the opening of what the industry will offer when
4G, a super-fast mobile broadband technology will be put into
work. With speeds of 20MB a second there is no need to have a
fixed-line broadband connection. The new service aims to speeds
of 20MB a second which will make the fixed-line broadband
connection almost useless.

At this point nothing can stop the industry to develop in this
direction, except maybe for the governments who are looking to
make billions from licensing spectrum and technology companies
looking to tie up intellectual property rights. But here comes
the role of the new created Next Generation Mobile Network
(NGMN) Forum that includes companies like Vodafone, T-Mobile,
Orange, KPN, DoCoMo and China Mobile and will lobby regulators
to allow operators to use their existing spectrum to run the
super-fast wireless broadband.