4G Chips from Qualcomm
Mobile phone chip maker Qualcomm has announced it’s now providing a new family of wireless chipsets (MSM7x30) that combine 3G and 4G technology to help phone carriers move to 4G phone networks.
Among the first companies to test the new technology are LG Electronics, Sierra Wireless and ZTE. Qualcomm expects the new chips to be available in commercial products by mid 2010. Android, Brew, Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems will all be supported.
The 4G Car
Soon the must-have option for new cars won’t be a sunroof or leather seats – it will be ultra high-speed, high-bandwidth 4G connectivity. At least, that’s the claim of NG Connect, a consortium of companies that recently showcased a prototype Toyota car with 4G internet.
Led by Alcatel-Lucent, the group also included names like Atlantic Records. The aim is to deliver unlimited music, video, maps, etc. to moving cars, via 4G. It could even be used to send information from shock sensors to help city authorities know where to repair potholes.
The Toyota prototype comes soon after the Mercedes-Benz 4G car. The first commercial 4G car is expected to hit the roads in 2012.
Norway 4G Network Will Be Built by China
Norway’s Telenor 4G phone network will be built by China’s Huawei. The deal is the biggest so far in 4G / LTE technology in Europe and is said to be worth $175 million / €118 million over the next five years.
The new network will replace technology currently in place by Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks.
Ragnar Kårhus, CEO of Telenor Norway, said, “This is the biggest upgrade of the mobile network in Norway we have ever carried out. It will create a solid base for further developing the services offered by the Telenor mobile network and the quality of those services. Our main aim is to provide customers with better, more innovative services across the country. This means better in terms of capacity, speed and stability.”.
4G Wireless in your Mercedes-Benz
Not strictly speaking a 4G phone but fun anyway…
Mercedes-Benz have recently been testing a high speed wireless internet system for their range of cars. The infotainment system myCOMMAND has passed its first on-road on a 4G network. During the test in Munich, bandwidth speeds were up to 25Mbps even when moving at 40 km/h.
The myCOMMAND system provides in car maps, navigation with street views and high quality streaming audio / video. I’ll take three.
Samsung Shows Off First 4G WiMAX Roaming Service
Mobile phone manufacturer Samsung and VMAX Telecom, a 4G WiMAX operator in Taiwan, have announced a successful demonstration of the first mobile WiMAX roaming service.
The demo took place at the Broadband Taiwan conference using a Samsung Mondi registered on the Clearwire Mobile WiMAX service in the US but accessed through the VMAX 4G phone service in Taiwan.
Roaming 4G services mean it’ll be easier to use your mobile phone abroad.
Alcatel-Lucent: 4G in Germany by end of 2010
Alcatel-Lucent, which has a 4G testing station setup in Stuttgart, Germany to demo LTE mobile solutions to European phone operators, is pleased with the initial results. That’s according to Erich Zielinski, Alcatel-Lucent’s chief for end-to-end 4G solutions, reported in Telecompaper.
Zielinski also predicts the first LTE services to be available in Germany by the end of 2010.
4G Mobile Cloud Platform
Funambol has introduced a 4G mobile cloud platform for device management and synchronization. The platform, which is open source, allows the management of business networks, email systems and data used and shared by mobile internet devices over 4G WiMAX and LTE networks.
The company says it’s working with some of biggest names in the mobile industry to launch new 4G mobile cloud sync services over the coming months.
4G Speed – The Truth
What speed will the mobile 4G internet run at? Motorola and ZTE think they know and it’s 20Mbps.
While showcasing data modems at trade show ITU World that support download speeds of up to 100Mbps and upload speeds of 50Mbps, both companies admitted that real world internet speeds will much slower.
Actual mobile speeds will instead be more like 20Mbps for downloads and 5Mbps for data uploads. That’s not as bad as it sounds – it’s still around ten times as fast as current real world speeds experienced by most 3G mobile users around the world.
