4G for Business: What's the Value Driver?

Some people believe, and carriers obviously hope, that new fourth-generation networks will create and enable new applications and revenue streams differentiated from 3G. That hope or expectation is based on the higher bandwidth and lower latency offered by 4G networks.

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"Unlike 3G, 4G networks are end-to-end IP, designed from the start to support converged application traffic and provide improved latency," Yankee Group researchers note. Examples of new applications sometimes center on collaboration apps, especially forms of telepresence and videoconferencing.

Others suggest 4G can be used as a better replacement for existing 3G applications and use cases, as a backup or replacement for fixed-line broadband, backhaul or redundant capacity service for times of peak load.

Call me a skeptic at this point, but similar claims about "enabling new applications" were touted when 3G networks were deployed as well, and it took quite some time for important new apps to develop.

New 4G networks are a vast improvement over 3G in many ways, but the mere existence of the network probably will not lead to dramatically-new apps, right away. If that does happen, some have suggested, it will be "personal Wi-Fi hotspot" or video apps that likely will drive the lead apps.

Initially, though, 4G is likely to be viewed as "better wireless broadband," to support existing apps. I'd prefer to be proven wrong, and soon. But history suggests it will take some time for really new apps to develop, in the business or consumer spaces.

Yankee Group Research Report