Next Phase of Mobile Communications – LTE: The End of Fixed Broadband?

Abstract

With the introduction of the Internet in the early 90th years of the last century, broadband demand has increased tremendously. As ISDN was the modern technology at that time, which has had its correspondence in the mobile world in the GSM technology, DSL and its evolution has its correspondence in UMTS/3G and its evolution into HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) and soon in LTE (Long Term Evolution). With the globalisation of our industries business has changed during the last 15 years. Employees are not anymore sitting eight hours a day in an office. They stroll around and need access to the Internet when out of office anytime anywhere. New categories have been born: the mobile worker and the mobile Internet. Does the mobile Internet have an implication on future communication’s behaviours of mobile workers? When mobile workers are already familiar with mobile broadband service access, do they need fixed broadband access in parallel? Would that be economical and productive? Some studies regarding the mobile Internet are already out. Researchers of Wildau University want to have more knowledge on this subject, but even more on the aspect, whether LTE could replace fixed broadband. Therefore, they have undertaken a study in the Berlin area to get a better understanding on different kinds of broadband access and give an answer to the question: LTE and Fixed Broadband – Competition or New Challenge? To put a long debate short, the answer is yes: LTE is a challenge and depending on the finance model it could be a strong competitor to fixed broadband as well.