Editor’s note
4G has arrived in South Africa and its only a matter of months before capable devices become rife in our country.
For those of us who aren’t programmers or network technicians, here’s the lowdown.
Cellphones work with specific networks designed to allow individual devices to communicate with each other, without the use of land lines also known as wireless communication.
The networks used to do this have come and gone over the years and have meanwhile been categorised based on their characteristics and speed of transmission.
- 1G: The first of these networks allowed only for voice transmission and the first was launched in 1979.
The networks in this class were later called 1G.
- 2G: In 1991, the first next generation networks, belonging to 2G, were launched.
These networks allowed for voice and data transmissions between cellular phones, for example, text messages, picture messages and multi-media messages.
- 3G: The next step was 3G, where wireless voice transmission and text/picture messaging are joined by mobile internet access, video calls and mobile TV.
The market is currently still dominated by 3G in most of the world, but that’s changing now.
- 4G: The new kid on the block.
Although Long Term Evolution (LTE) is one of the few networks usually spoken of as 4G, these networks do not meet the requirements as set up by the International Telecommunication Union.
They do, however, offer much higher data speeds than 3G.
Soon after the release of these networks, improved versions were launched, which do meet the standards for 4G.
4G is now the fastest existing set of internet access networks on the planet, headed in most of the world by LTE’s faster offspring, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) running at an astonishing minimum of 100 Mbit/s when mobile, which means you could theoretically download a standard definition movie in eight seconds.
To put that into perspective, if you want to download a high definition movie (HD) with a true 4G network, it will take you, at most, four minutes, while the same movie would take you more than half an hour to download on the real time average for 3G networks.
LTE-A is the future, and it’s here now.
Telkom has already launched the network in several suburbs across South Africa and more are to follow.
This means as soon as LTE-A capable devices come out in the country next month, it shouldn’t be a year before land lines become obsolete, except for those who like the feel of a real telephone in the hand. FvD
