4G Technology to make headway into India by 2013 – DoT

4G Technology India

Vijayalakhsmi Gupta, member (finance), department of telecommunications (DoT) while speaking at the 6th 3G India 2010 conference, organised by Bharat Exhibitions said, “Soon after the success of 3G auctions, we have proactively started exploring 4G technology. Trai has already floated consultation papers regarding 4G. The technology is likely to make headway into India by around 2013,” she added.

She added that after 3G rollout, while video-on-demand and other live streaming services are likely to gain prominence among the high revenue generating customers, enhanced bandwidth may also lead to increased usage of existing mobile (value added services) VAS.

Currently, the VAS market is worth around Rs 12,000 crore, generating approximately 10% of wireless industry revenues. The share of VAS in wireless revenue is likely to increase to 12-13 % by 2011. This growth would be driven by increased operator focus on VAS due to continuous fall in voice tariffs, increased penetration of feature rich handsets, availability of vernacular content and increased user adoption of VAS applications.

What is 4G ?

4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to 3G and 2G  families of standards. The nomenclature of the generations generally refers to a change in the fundamental nature of the service, non-backwards compatible transmission technology and new frequency bands. The first was the move from 1981 analog (1G) to digital (2G) transmission in 1992. This was followed, in 2002, by 3G multi-media support, spread spectrum transmission and at least 200 kbit/s, soon expected to be followed by 4G, which refers to all-IP packet-switched networks, mobile ultra-broadband (gigabit speed) access and multi-carrier transmission