Get Ready for Fourth-Generation Wireless
On this volcanic island at the tip of the Korean Peninsula, where kings once exiled dissidents and tourists now flock to casinos, South Korean engineers recently unveiled a prototype of a wireless network that they hope will revolutionize Internet access.
Last month, Samsung gave the first public demonstration of its version of the network. One day, the company and others in the industry hope, the network will allow users to open a laptop anywhere and, without attaching a cable or looking for a Wi-Fi hotspot, immediately surf the Internet or download music and movies at the speed of the fastest broadband .
But while companies like Samsung, Intel and NTT DoCoMo are spending heavily in a race to control crucial aspects of this evolving new technology and to promote it as the next wave in Internet access, its future is far from certain.
Many in the industry seem split over whether the technology, sometimes called fourth-generation wireless, or 4G, will usher in an era of instant Internet availability or turn into a multibillion-dollar flop. Skeptics, many of them on Wall Street, point to a string of failures to turn wireless, still predominantly used for speaking on cellphones, into a challenger in the market for Internet access services.
The market in the United States for Internet access cable modems, DSL and other methods is worth as much as $60 billion, said Bin Shen, a vice president at Sprint Nextel in charge of commercializing the new service.
Skeptics say the biggest danger is that the new system, while an engineering marvel, is not something that consumers would actually use. They say the high cost of the nationwide wireless networks envisioned would probably be passed down to users as high fees. Fixed-line access like fiber optics and cable modems, they say, will continue to be cheaper, faster and more reliable. "Four-G is just much ado about nothing," said Edward Snyder, an analyst at Charter Equity Research. "There's no business model here. Just a lot of marketing and hot air."
Last month, Samsung gave the first public demonstration of its version of the network. One day, the company and others in the industry hope, the network will allow users to open a laptop anywhere and, without attaching a cable or looking for a Wi-Fi hotspot, immediately surf the Internet or download music and movies at the speed of the fastest broadband .
But while companies like Samsung, Intel and NTT DoCoMo are spending heavily in a race to control crucial aspects of this evolving new technology and to promote it as the next wave in Internet access, its future is far from certain.
Many in the industry seem split over whether the technology, sometimes called fourth-generation wireless, or 4G, will usher in an era of instant Internet availability or turn into a multibillion-dollar flop. Skeptics, many of them on Wall Street, point to a string of failures to turn wireless, still predominantly used for speaking on cellphones, into a challenger in the market for Internet access services.
The market in the United States for Internet access cable modems, DSL and other methods is worth as much as $60 billion, said Bin Shen, a vice president at Sprint Nextel in charge of commercializing the new service.
Skeptics say the biggest danger is that the new system, while an engineering marvel, is not something that consumers would actually use. They say the high cost of the nationwide wireless networks envisioned would probably be passed down to users as high fees. Fixed-line access like fiber optics and cable modems, they say, will continue to be cheaper, faster and more reliable. "Four-G is just much ado about nothing," said Edward Snyder, an analyst at Charter Equity Research. "There's no business model here. Just a lot of marketing and hot air."
posted by Kintu at
11:53 AM
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