What to expect from 3G?
So, finally 3G is set to launch in India from Private operators. One of my friend came to me and asked:
“So what should we really expect from 3G? End of wired broadband?”
Very nice one!
Short answer - NO, NO yet!
It’s quite strange to see, how users are taking 3G. Actually it has been largely “overestimated” technology, specially from Indian media. Let’s first try to understand - What exactly is 3G? Without going into geeky definitions - 3G is simply upgrade from 2G. It uses higher frequency, and thus has more spectrum available for more bandwidth. That’s all. One important thing we need to understand is - 3G is more or less just a last mile technology i.e it connects telecom network’s exchange to consumer’s device. Mostly 3G, 2G, landline network, and broadband network - all share same core network backhaul. Western countries who did deployed 3G many years back are going into hybrid path of taking 3G to 4G apart form offloading peak data to (wired) broadband networks. They are promoting use of wifi, bringing new gadget FemtoCell. At this time, it doesn’t makes sense to say - 3G is everything! Latest capping on uncapped 3G plans by AT&T is a good example of that.