Quiz of the Week: The 4G Future!

Last October, after numerous delays and the threat of legal action, 4G mobile services finally arrived in the UK. Our quiz this week looks at how we got 4G services and what you can expect from them.

The story of 4G involves the network technologies, the operators needed to build them and phones required to use them as well as struggles at every stage of the way. All this for the utlimate goal of getting Internet speeds as fast as wired broadband into a mobile phone or tablet.

The 4G fight

Glib ads from the UK’s only 4G ope4rator, EE, belie the years of struggle that got faster mobile broadband established,

Other technologies fought to be recognised as “4G” before the current front runner, LTE, emerged and telecoms regulators had to stake out and justify claims for specific parts of the radio spectrum – and then set out rules to auction those licences.

That started a fight amongst operators on two fronts. Each one needed a licence for spectrum on which to deliver 4G services and (if at all possible) they also wanted to limit the amount of spectrum their rivals would have to play with.

All that horse trading put the UK’s 4G auction behind those in other countries, but the logjam broke when Ofcom allowed EE to deliver services on its existing spectrum – a move which meant the other operators suddenly wanted the auction to happen quickly.

Now the dust has settled, and the 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum has been allocated, with all our existing mobile operators getting a slice. The stage is set for all of us to benefit from faster mobile data. Want to find how much you know?

Try the quiz!

And if you like it, try some others….