As carriers roll out new high-speed 3G and even 4G wireless services, small and midsize corporations should begin planning for deployment of more powerful mobile applications.
Faster cellular service speeds have long been an object of desire for small and midsize businesses. With mobile communications becoming more important in companies of all sizes, the need for faster cellular connections is becoming a top of mind concern. Just last week, AT&T stepped up to try and meet that challenge.
Cellular networks are under stress because user devices -- particularly iPhones and other smartphones as well as 3G-connected netbooks and laptops -- have been gaining more and more processing power. Traditionally, these networks have supported transmission speeds in the 100Kbps range, but businesses -- and consumers -- have become dissatisfied with that performance. A January 2009 Gartner survey confirmed that many business wireless users were unhappy with network throughput.
What's Behind The Problem? A number of factors have led to the grumbling. Carriers advertise best-case scenarios but do not guarantee network throughput. Congestion slows transmission rates, roaming reduces network speed, and some laptop cards do not support the highest speeds promoted by the carriers. Consequently, users seldom experience these best case networks. And, according to the New York Times, the iPhone is a major culprit, at least for AT&T. Jenna Wortham reports that "the average iPhone owner can also use 10 times the network capacity used by the average smartphone user... The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds."
Because more and more employees work with complex, multimedia files, small and medium businesses now desire multi-Mbps wireless networks. AT&T has been a languishing in the back of the pack in delivering such capabilities. In fact, the carrier received the most complaints about its network performance in the Gartner survey.
The cellular service provider has been trying to improve network performance. In June 2008, AT&T upgraded its 3G network to reach peak speeds of 1.7M bps. This past April, the company said that it was doubling its capacity to support speeds of 3.6M bps. In September, the carrier spelled outlined plans to upgrade its network to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which delivers 7.2M bps speeds. Six major markets (Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami) are scheduled to have this ability by the end of the year. By the end of 2011, AT&T plans to deploy HSPA 7.2 to about 90% of its 3G footprint. In addition, the company is trying to build up the HSPA ecosystem. AT&T expects to have six HSPA smartphones and two new LaptopConnect cards in its device portfolio by the end of the year.
Don't Miss: AT&T Details 3G Upgrade Plans
The Promise Of 4G Networks While the HSPA work should appeal to users who are having trouble transmitting information now, the real focus for AT&T (as well as other cellular carriers) is the migration to 4G networks based on Long-Term Evolution technology (LTE). These networks have the potential to support 60Mbps to 70Mbps transmissions. AT&T is prepping for the move to this technology now. As it rolls out its HSPA services, the carrier plans to upgrade its backhaul capacity to support not only HSPA, but also 4G LTE transmissions. The telecommunications giant expects to begin trialing its 4G services in 2010 and deploying them in 2011.
However, that still leaves AT&T a step or two behind its arch rival Verizon, which plans to launch 60Mbps LTE "pre-commercial" cellular service in a couple of cities later this year. Commercial service is planned to officially go live in 2010, with service expansion to 25 to 30 markets. Because wireless communications have become so important to businesses and consumers, carriers are aggressively upgrading their networks. In fact, AT&T says it plans to invest between $17 billion and $18 billion in infrastructure upgrades this year, with more than two-thirds of the money going toward broadband and wireless services.
Whether or not that will be enough to boost the company's market position is unclear. What is clear is that high speed wireless connections will soon become more common from a variety of carriers. That means small and midsize corporations can begin planning for deployment of more sophisticated -- and more bandwidth-hungry -- mobile applications over the next few years.
See more columns by Paul Korzeniowski.
Paul Korzeniowski is a Sudbury, Mass.-based freelance writer who has been writing about networking issues for two decades. His work has appeared in Business 2.0, Entrepreneur, Investor's Business Daily, Newsweek, and InformationWeek.
Follow bMighty.com on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/bMighty
Put a bMighty gadget on your iGoogle page
Get bMighty on your mobile device
