The market for wireless data transfer is quickly evolving as global rather than local solutions are pursued – solutions offering robust data transfer rates, predictable spikes in traffic and are interoperable. One of the fastest-growing standards in the competition for ownership of the new fourth generation or “4G” market is LTE technology, which promises a number of improvements over current mobile and data terminal service.
What is LTE?
LTE actually stands for “long term evolution”, and its full name is 3GPP LTE, with the 3GPP standing for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, which has been developing the technology’s release documents.
Often, LTE is marketed as 4G technology by companies that package it as part of their wireless or mobile service, but the standard is better thought of as “3.9G” as it does not yet meet the requirements set out by the ITU-R for 4G, which includes minimum upload and download rates for networks and defines how connections must be established.
A new version of LTE technology, LTE Advanced, does satisfy the requirements of a true 4G network and is available now to enhance the 4G experience.
This technology got its start in 2004, proposed by NTT DoCoMo of Japan. Studies began officially in 2005 and by 2008 the first standard has been finalized. It went live in Oslo and Stockholm in 2009 as a form of data connection with a USB modem, supported by carrier TeliaSonera. In 2011, MetroPCS and Verizon migrated to this technology in North America. Initially, providers such as Sprint, Bell, Verizon and even MetroPCS, which run on CDMA networks had plans to upgrade to a rival standard known as UMB, but have now decided to throw their support behind LTE and LTE Advanced.
So, what exactly is LTE?
It’s based on GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies, and provides an increase to both capacity and speed using new techniques for modulation. It provides peak download rates of 300 megabits per second, upload rates of 75 megabits per second and a transfer latency of less than five milliseconds. It can also manage multi-cast and broadcast streams and handle quick-moving mobile phones. Its Evolved Packet Core (EPC), IP-based network architecture, allows for seamless handovers for voice and data to older model cell towers that use GSM, UMTS or CDMA2000 technology. In addition, it can scale from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz carrier bandwidths and supports both time-division and frequency division duplexing.
Overall, the new architecture of LTE technology means lower operating costs along with greater overall data and voice capacity.
The Issues Surrounding LTE
One emerging issue related to the use of the LTE standard is that of voice communication. All GSM, UMTS and CDMA2000 networks are circuit switched, but the ITU-R standard for a 4G network calls for exclusively packet switching through an IP network, something LTE supports. This means that carriers switching to LTE will need to alter their voice call network to support the new switching. Currently, most providers use what is known as circuit switched fallback (CSFB), where LTE provides only data services and voice calls “fallback” to being circuit switched. This is easy to setup and operate, but does mean a longer call setup time. The most likely candidate for future packet switched voice calls revolves around the use of VoLTE or Voice Over LTE, which uses the IP Multimedia Subsystem network.
LTE offers a number of benefits over current 4G technology and forms the backbone of many current 4G mobile networks. Sprint has built its own LTE Plus network, T-Mobile uses Extended Range LTE and Verizon has the XLTE Advanced Wireles network utilizing the LTE technology. With these new networks, the speeds are finally catching up to the 4G speeds necessary for true 4G networks and all of the major carriers are quickly utilizing the newest technologies available to serve you better in an ever-changing wireless capacity.