ITU's 4G 'Beauty contest' gets underway

Stuart Corner
Monday, 26 October 2009 06:20

Business IT - Technology

Forget all those claims from WiMAX and cellular operators bragging about their 4G wireless technologies. No 4G technologies exist today. The International Telecommunication Union has just started evaluating candidate technologies for the global 4G mobile wireless broadband standard. It and expects to announce, in October 2010 those chosen to qualify as "true 4G technologies" - and that’s official!

The six proposals are all aligned with two major technologies: 3GPP LTE Release 10 and beyond (LTE-Advanced) technology and the IEEE 802.16m technology, the next evolution of the 802.16e "mobile WiMAX" standard. Vendors and network of operators from both the LTE and 802.16e camp regulator tout their respective, current, technologies as being 4G.

The six proposals were formally submitted at a meeting last week of ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) Working Party 5D in response to an open invitation, issued in March 2008. Those chosen by ITU will be accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced, making them "true 4G technologies" in the eyes of the ITU.

The ITU says the six proposals "will be assessed against ITU-R requirements using a defined evaluation process. This rigorous assessment over the next year will be supported by the work of independent external evaluation groups that have been established around the world and will take place under the direction of ITU-R Working Party 5D."

To jump-start to the assessment phase, fourteen evaluation groups "representing the whole gamut of stakeholders, including equipment manufacturers, technology developers, network operators and service providers, market and user organizations, universities, research institutions and national administrations," have registered with the ITU.

Stephen Blust, director of radio standards at, AT&T and chairman of Working Party 5D, which is responsible for the evaluation of the candidate technologies, said: "In 2002 when the strategic vision for 4G - which we designated as IMT-Advanced - was laid out in anticipation of the longer term future needs of the marketplace, it established a new level of expectation for the capabilities and performance of global mobile wireless broadband systems that many thought at the time was something that could not be reached in this decade.

"When ITU-R established the detailed performance requirements of IMT-Advanced in 2008, it truly raised the bar for mobile wireless. It is gratifying to note that the stakeholders in the mobile wireless industry have risen to the challenge. And we have every expectation that with these proposals the vision can indeed be achieved in the near term."

In March 2008 the ITU spelt out the requirements of IMT-Advanced http://www.itu.int/md/R07-IMT.ADV-C-0001/en as being:
– a high degree of commonality of functionality worldwide while retaining the flexibility to support a wide range of services and applications in a cost efficient manner;
– compatibility of services within IMT and with fixed networks;
– capability of interworking with other radio access systems;
– high quality mobile services;
– user equipment suitable for worldwide use;
– user-friendly applications, services and equipment;
– worldwide roaming capability; and,
– enhanced peak data rates to support advanced services and applications (100Mbps for high and 1Gbps for low mobility were established as targets for research) .

A layman's perspective of the IMT-Advanced process and plan can be found here. The main ITU page for the development of IMT-Advanced is here.