KDDI, KT early 3G leaders

 

Landing in the dreaded "followers" category, where Yankee sends operators that are slower to develop 4G strategies or have had challenges integrating past technology decisions, are AT&T, Telenor and Vodafone.

 

Customer awareness will be one of the major challenges for 4G wireless operators in 2011, Nicoll said, because they need to figure out how to position their 4G networks against their own 3G networks, as well as against competitors.

 

In the early days, differentiation will likely be recognized through 4G devices wireless (including data cards and dongles), but the lines will blur as more 4G handsets hit the market.

 

Operators need to get beyond the speed and price discussion with customers and market the "experience" enabled by 3G and 4G, historically a difficult jump.

 

Operators that tie their marketing messages to third-party services will see the most improvement, Nicoll said, and average revenue per user will improve due to the ability to charge add-on rates for services like mobile TV.

 

To move the 4G business model along, Yankee suggests that operators focus their early 4G services on a specific market solution or a point of competitive differentiation to create a specific identity with customers.

 

Backing up Yankee's point, some wireless operators have already started building 4G solutions for vertical markets like health care or manufacturing.

 

Another confusing 4G issue for customers is that operators have three different technology options: HSPA+, LTE and Wimax. Customers don't know the difference, much less whether there is any device portability among them.

 

HSPA+ will be a viable alternative to LTE for the next few years, according to Yankee. HSPA+ is already operational in almost 30 European networks that report speeds of up to 21 Mbps.

 

LTE's 40-50 Mbps speeds in Sweden easily surpass that, but HSPA+ beats some LTE test speeds (like Verizon's Boston 700 MHz test, with unofficial speeds of about 8.5 Mbps), the report said.