Mobile communication has rapidly increased throughout the world, not just in the US. Places even like Cambodia or even South Africa are taking use of this technology. But a topic that I would like to elaborate on is 4G. What is 4G? 4G is short for 4th generation of mobile technology. The goal of 4G was to improve on the speed of wireless communication, make phones become a more user friendly experience, broaden the range of service to cell phones, to make a more competitive market with other countries, and make download speeds more seamless. The first company as many of us know from their commercials to introduce 4G is Sprint.
Bringing up the topic of Sprint being the first company to market 4G in the US, lets discuss them first. They claim that 4G is about 10 times faster than the older 3G. From their charts, 4G is rated at an average download speed at around 3 to 6 Mb/sec, and can be as high as 10 Mb/sec . But the important part is the way that this will impact our society and culture. It will provide the usability of resources like the internet or making a call all at your finger tips easier. It is also expected to increase mobile HDTV, “real time audio”, and make a smoother call from other phone providers. But how they plan on doing this will be different from the past. They plan on incorporating more than one antenna to the device to increase stability and speed of the network (sort of like a wireless home network).
The biggest way that 4G is going to impact the economy is with the ease of communicating one thing or another in companies. 4G will be the most useful to global businesses who need to converse with another about different projects. But it will not only impact things like businesses, it will also affect the consumer. 4G as I have stated before is going to provide improved speed and reliability. At the beginning, I touched on a bit about Sprint. What they are trying to use their 4G network is as something that will have a high usability (almost like the Apps like on the iPhone), the support for multimedia services like the internet or TV (things like streaming football games to your phone), the ability to personalize (Apps), and the integrated services provided by the phone provider. So this will make it easier to present your thoughts to anyone that you need to get a hold of.
But what does this mean for privacy. I think to explain this the best, I will start with the user. Depending how the user uses the services will determine how safe they will be against being “hacked”. But pertaining to the safety of using 4G, it is like using any of the earlier generations of mobile communicating or the internet. If you don’t want everyone to know, don’t post it.
As 4G becomes more popular in our culture, there are some guidelines that should be noted. The first thing is using the proper devices to get the most out of this new technology. Bringing up the Sprint topic again, the first smart phone that they made accessible on their network is the HTC EVO 4G. This phone takes advantage of (and can be related to the iPhone) are a friendly user interface, dual cameras for a more advanced social networking, proximity and motion sensors, Digital GPS and Compass, access the internet, and use apps similar to the iPhone. The second are the services that are provided. An example of this are companies that are making new apps to increase the functionality of the smart phone market. Some of them even take use of 4G and are becoming increasingly popular.
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