Current Trend in Telecommunications Research Paper

Current Trend in Telecommunications - Research Paper Example One of the sectors that demonstrate this fact clearly is mobile telecommunications which has been growing tremendously over the last decade all around the world, with competitive entry and the setting up of technological standards playing a key part in dissemination of technology (Gruber 2005). The size of the mobile communications industry is growing by the day and the next set of devices that will be availed to consumers will adopt cutting edge technology for better services at even lower costs. The development and growth in technology has been steady from 1G, then 2G, to 3G and now 4G (Mobile Communications, 2007). It was inevitable that these developments would lead to 4G Long Term Evolution, as operators all over the world are tending to shift from voice-driven revenue to broadband and to an extent video (Nolle, 2010). As a result, one of the most exciting fields of study in terms of current trends in the telecommunications industry is 4G LTE wireless networks, where its history , a detailed description of the technology involved, the most probable future trends, the companies involved, the regulatory issues and finally the implications especially with relation to globalization form a good basis of study. Background of Wireless Networks It is important to first study the history of wireless technologies that finally led to the development of 4G LTE. The development of mobile communication technologies has been divided into distinct generations. To begin with there was the 1G, which describes the initial analog mobile phone technology examples of which are the NMT and AMPS technologies (Mobile Communications, 2007). 1G cellular wireless system featured analog modulation and was primarily designed to deliver voice-based services. They were the first to use a cellular system and automatically switch an on-going call (Arunabha et al, 2010). 2G technology then came about, described as the first digital mobile phone systems. 2G enabled users to access digital speech services and data capabilities from their devices, albeit to a limited extent. Examples of 2G technologies include GSM, IS95 CDMA and PDC. An enhanced version of 2G was then developed and dubbed 2.5G availing considerably higher data rates and packet data ser vices. GSM led the way in this with their EDGE and GPRS systems. This is what is mostly available to many users across the world as of now (Mobile Communications, 2007). 2G technologies brought several advantages mainly including improvement of system capacity and voice quality (Holma et al, 2007). The third generation or 3G/UMTS/W-CDMA are designed to give high speed mobile internet, quality services and video telephony (Mobile Communications, 2007). In comparison to 2G, 3G provided higher data speeds, better voice capacity and in an altogether new concept, support for advanced applications such as multimedia services. 3G technologies enabled better voice services, games, browsing and email, streaming multimedia services among others, and thus a clear improvement over 2G (Arunabha et al, 2010). After the 3G technology, operators then envisioned something beyond it; they could adopt HSPA, deploy WiMAX or deploy LTE. LTE provided an option for many operators who had not yet adopted 3 G to bypass HSPA (Arunabha et al, 2010). When it was conceptualized, it was pictured that 4G would provide never before experienced high speed internet with a high capacity, protocol based service that would be available at lower costs per bit. It was to be a combination of several existing technologies optimized for efficacy, including celluart network, wireless LAN, 3G and others, all connected together using relevant