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NewsGlobe: Currents
3G bad; 4G better be better
Nortel-backed study finds consumers frustrated by wireless data limitations
by Jim Barthold
Not surprisingly, tech-savvy young adults are frustrated by the
speed and connectivity limitations of 3G networks and expect
both better speed and more reliable connectivity when 4G
arrives, according to focus groups in the U.S. and Japan
queried by Nortel and the consultant firm CSMG ADVENTIS.
“There was uniform dissatisfaction with today’s UMTS or 3G
networks, whether that was because the feeds just weren’t
good enough, the applications that they were running, like
video, just weren’t good enough. They look forward in the
next generation of technologies to something that can deliver
their expectations for these applications in ways that are
easy, friendly and useful,” said Scott Wickware, vice president
of wireless networks for Nortel.
Wickware said that the focus groups, based in New York City,
Seattle and Washington, D.C. in the U.S. and Tokyo and
Osaka in Japan, had similar unhappy feelings about their 3G
wireless services.
“We expected the Japanese to have a different perspective
on this because they’re perceived to be the most tech-savvy
nation on the planet, but 25-year-old businesspeople in both
countries seem to want the same thing,” Wickware said.
Not coincidentally, what they want is what Nortel has been
preaching: “this hyper-trend called mega-connectivity that
says everything that could be connected to the network and
would be beneficial to the network will be connected to the
network,” Wickware said. “We couldn’t have scripted it any
better because the feedback came back almost universally
saying the same thing.”
The feedback also indicated that users did not necessarily
want a single multi-use device but preferred multiple devices
connected to the network.
“They don’t want just the mobile phone connected to the
network or their PC, they want their camera, their MP3 player,
their vehicle, they want everything. I think the trending is a
single or dual-purpose device is what a lot of people want,”
he said.
Overall, he said, respondents are looking for more from
future network services.
“We asked them a wide variety of questions about what they
wanted from 4G. We didn’t define 4G for them and lead them
down the path to see what they had to say, but left it pretty
wide open so we were getting top-of-mind stuff that wasn’t
influenced by our views,” he said.
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