Wireless advances again

You 3G or 4G? Or, alas, stuck in 2G? Hard to keep track. Well, it's about to get even harder because they're introducing a protocol known as LTE-Advanced or IMT-Advanced.

The announcer in this case was the International Telecommunication Union or ITU, the  United Nations agency for information and communication technologies. According to the ITU, "IMT-Advanced systems include new capabilities that go beyond IMT-2000, widely deployed since 2000 and referred to as 3G mobile technologies."

Is this a good thing? According to ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure it's a major development in mobile technology. IMT-Advanced marks a huge leap forward in state-of-the-art technologies, which will make the present day smart phone feel like an old dial up Internet connection. Access to the Internet, streaming videos and data transfers anytime, anywhere will be better than most desktop connections today."

Interpreting what this means, however, isn't simple. For one thing, "3G, 4G and 5G have all become meaningless marketing terms," so there's no real comparison available. Moreover, IMT-Advanced (the more common European term) provides capabilities, not necessarily capacity. As the ITU says, "IMT-Advanced also has capabilities for high quality multimedia applications within a wide range of services and platforms, providing a significant improvement in performance and quality of service."

But that doesn't imply it's meaningless. One of its features magnifies existing wire load by use of something called carrier aggregation. "Simply put, it allows operators to bond their current downlink and uplink channels -- known collectively as carriers - on top of one another to create stupendously fast connection speeds..."

One analyst predicted that "LTE-Advanced will ultimately have a huge impact on the mobile networks and the devices that use them, but don't expect 1 Gbps speeds to suddenly pop on your phones next year." Sprint, Verizon and AT&T have all announced that they'll be going with LTE-Advanced - in the future. AT&T stated that they'd begin work on it in 2013, but no word on how long it will take to be significant. So, it will take time, but eventually, "its impact on your smartphone, your tablet and your vehicle -- and hopefully your monthly wireless bill -- will grow as operators dive more fully into the standard."

Unstated is how much additional spectrum the new technology will require. Our appetite for data is increasing exponentially, and Congress has been slow to act on the current spectrum shortfall. So, widespread introduction of LTE-Advanced may have to take a back seat to politics - no matter what the International Telecommunication Union proclaims.

IMT-Advanced standards announced for next-generation mobile technology (ITU press release, Jan. 18, 2012)

LTE-Advanced: Think of it as broadband for cars (gigaom.com, Jan. 20, 2012)

Shocker: Verizon director admits to LTE-Advanced future (engadget.com, Sept. 15, 2011)

AT&T to deploy LTE-Advanced in 2013 (Fierce Wireless, Nov. 8, 2011)