Mobile Phone Technology

4G-Drivers for 4G Technology
image ©Redline Groups

Why was 3G not good enough? What are the technology drivers that drove the demand for 4G technology. If the demand was not there, then the mobile network operators will not invest. Gartner put forward 5 technologies that require 4G networks to make the technology work and in doing so change modern society.

  1. Video / TV There had been a long held dream to have live TV on a mobile phone. This, in addition to none-live TV and videos services, would be available on a mobile phone via the 4G mobile network. The demand is for standard definition TV or Video to be available on a mobile device attached to a mobile network.
  2. Office Anywhere For small organisations the provision of fixed office space and facilities can be costly, and indeed within larger firms much of the office space is not occupied 9 to 5. Add this to the need to work away from base for many individuals provides a requirement to allow mobile office software. The mobile networks need to be able to support disk storage such as Onedrive, Google Drive etc. Additionally the 4G mobile network should support online office software such as Google Docs. Note this was written pre Covid pandemic and whilst the original Gartner demand was to do with workers working at various locations, mobile networks allowed WFH in many businesses to continue
  3. Music in the cloud There is a revolution in music, away from physical items such as CDs or vinyl to streaming. The 4G mobile network will support the streaming of music from organisations such as Spotify, or Apple Music.
  4. IoT. The growth and rollout of IoT requires network capacity to upload and download data. 4G will provide a suitable network anywhere. In addition many of these IoT networks will have an associated mobile application. Health or Fitness Apps have a large mobile upload requirement which can only be provided by a good (4G) mobile network.
  5. Social Multimedia Facbook Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms are with us all the time and everywhere. Many users wish up upload anytime and anyplace. The 4G network needs to be able to-support this demand.

Note that the article from Gartner was written prior to the implementation of 4G in 2010. These demands seem to us today (in 2025) look like obvious used of mobile phone technology. Looks like Gartnet got this right!