GENEVA
(AP)—A United Nations telecom meeting has approved the next generation
of mobile technology, which experts say will make devices 500 times
faster than 3G smartphones and eliminate the wait time between the tap
of a finger and the appearance of a Web page.
The
technology will be used immediately for planning changes to equipment
but it could take two years to show up on consumers smartphone, tablets
and other devices because of the time it takes to get to production,
International Telecommunication Union spokesman Sanjay Acharya said
Thursday.
The
differences between present technology and the new standards for
IMT-Advanced are like comparing dial-up Internet to fiber-optic cables,
say officials at the U.N. agency responsible for information and
communication technology.
“This means absolutely no time to get a page open,” said Francois Rancy, head of the agency’s radiocommunication bureau.
The technology hasn’t been available until now because the U.N. must first approve of the international standards for its use.
The
IMT-Advanced system uses radio-frequency spectrum much more
efficiently, and devices built with it will need less bandwidth to
access the Internet, stream videos and transfer data. That means those
devices could deliver blazing fast messages, video chats and even
high-definition TV.
The
new standards for what some call “true” 4G, or fourth generation of
mobile wireless standards, were approved by the ITU Radiocommunication
Assembly at its meeting this week in Geneva. ITU set the requirements
for 4G service in 2009.
In
December 2010, ITU said some current technologies such as LTE and WiMax
could be billed as forerunners to 4G, even though they don’t meet the
requirements of the IMT-Advanced system.
The
2G, 3G and 4G families of standards have been set by the International
Telecommunication Union to define the services and download speed
provided by networks.
The current 3G mobile technology, known as International Mobile Telecommunications, has been widely used since 2000.
Rancy
said the new IMT-Advanced systems will deliver “a much higher quality
and a much higher bit rate, typically of the order of 100 megabits per
second.”
A
bit is a measure of data, so the new technology would allow devices to
obtain data fast enough that most TV shows could be downloaded within
about 20 seconds, and CDs within about a minute.
“This is a huge leap,” Rancy said. “This is what people are really asking for now.”
ITU Radiocommunication Assembly 2012
SOURCE: The Associated Press