LTE: Lets not repeat the sins of past generations

There are no new mistakes - just old ones that we make again and again.  This truism applies to all aspects of life and business, and never more so than to the launch of a new mobile generation.  It seems that everytime we begin the process of launching a new generation of mobile (1G to 2G;  or 2G to 3G) we delete the painful memories of how we got it wrong the last time, and blindly repeat the usual mistakes.  Lets try and break this cycle with LTE!

First of all lets talk about the easy bit of launching 4th generation mobile - the network.  This is the bit that has absorbed billions of dollars of investment, has been standardised to the  N^th degree, has been developed, designed and tested for large scale deployment. This is the bit that the whole industry focues on, and which causes the major media splashes when it is eventually switched on.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that rolling out the next generation of network is not an achievement, but it is one part of a three part puzzle, that is pretty useless on it's own. 

The next part of the puzzle are the handsets.  Inevitably these will be late and limited in terms of volumes and variety.  Apart from manfully accomodating voice and messaging, their first iterations will fail to exploit the potentials offered by the move to LTE.  It will probably be as late as two years post the launch of LTE that advanced, attractive handsets will appear in volumes that can drive market success for LTE. There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation with the handsets (the manufacturers won't invest in them until there is a proven market), so it is understandably difficult to get around this issue.

The final piece of the puzzle is the software & systems that deliver the next generation of services and manages the complexity of 4th generation mobile.  Without this LTE will bump along the ground as an expensive 3G replacement.  Without the design and development of new services that take advantage of the capabilities of LTE, and their integration into the delivery and billing capabilities of the service provider,  there will be no bonanza from LTE.  Without investing in working out how to manage challenges such as the huge backhaul requirements of LTE, growth will be stiffled.  These are the hot spot that the TM Forum is focusing on through a wide variety of collaborative activities around new service creation and the core network, service and information management challenges LTE presents.

So lets not commit the sins of our fathers and lets start investing time and money in working out what we are going to use the massive capabilities of LTE for, and how we are going to manage and monetize it.  Without this investment we are in danger of creating a very expensive white elephant!