4G LTE mobile phone technology will be far more spectrum efficient than today’s 3G networks, said industry watchdog Ofcom.
“Research reveals that the next generation of mobile technology will deliver more than 200% of the capacity of existing 3G technologies, using the same amount of spectrum,” said Ofcom.
The comms regulator said that the increased capacity this brings will be essential in meeting the UK’s rapid increase in mobile traffic.
The rollout of 4G mobile technologies is not expected to take place in the UK before 2013.
“The research that we commissioned indicates that early 4G mobile networks with standard configurations will be 3.3 times more spectrally efficient than today’s standard 3G networks,” said Dr Stephen Unger, chief technology officer at Ofcom.
“4G mobile technologies will be able to send more information than 3G, for a given amount of spectrum. To put this in context, a user on an early 4G network will be able to download a video in around a third of the time it takes today on a 3G network,” said Unger.
“It is anticipated that this efficiency will increase to approximately 5.5 times by 2020,” added Unger.
The research revealed that the capacity gain from the increased spectral efficiency of 4G technologies will not on its own be sufficient to meet the expected growth in demand for mobile data.
As well as using existing spectrum more efficiently, more spectrum itself is also needed, some of which will be gained from the auction of new spectrum at 800MHz and 2.6GHz in 2012, equivalent to three quarters of the mobile spectrum in use today.
The research is available