Is 3G doomed?…
Came across this (below) on zdnet earlier this week. Very interesting…To be honest, I had never thought about this in terms of power at all…Not sure if this really matters though (and whether there are not ways to mitigate it…one radical approach being making the user pay…)
What do others think? and does this have any policy implications in India and China…in terms of 3G rollout?
**************
Analysts claim the demands of mobile broadband applications could make WiMax and Metro Wi-Fi the cheaper option for operators
In a piece of research that could have implications for the future of mobile broadband, a US analyst firm has claimed that new mobile applications will make pure cellular technology too energy-inefficient to be practical in the future.
Instead, suggests the report by ABI Research — entitled Energy Efficiency Analysis for Mobile Broadband Solutions — operators may be forced to integrate WiMax and Metro Wi-Fi into their networks.
Noting that energy costs represent the third most expensive operating expense (OPEX) for carriers today — and that energy costs continue to fluctuate and could rise — the authors claim that the increase in data traffic resulting from the rise of mobile broadband “will push per-subscriber energy OPEX for cellular solutions past acceptable barriers”.
From a pure coverage perspective WiMax is twice as energy-cost-effective and metro Wi-Fi is 50 times more energy-cost-effective than WCDMA [a 3G network protocol],” said Stuart Carlaw, ABI’s director of wireless research, on Thursday. “When data traffic is factored into the equation, WiMax can accommodate 11 times today’s average data consumption and still be more energy-cost-efficient compared to WCDMA or HSDPA.” HSDPA is an enhancement to existing 3G networks, which makes them significantly faster.
