4G mobile network arrives – but it could ruin your TV

Fourth-generation (4G) mobile phone networks have finally been unveiled in Norway, Sweden - and Slough. But a worrying tendency to interfere with your TV reception could prove fatal to the new technology's chances of replacing 3G mobile networks.

There are no mobile phone handsets yet available to take advantage of the new technology - also known as LTE. Early adopters will initially access LTE networks on laptops with specially modified 'dongles' (displayed above by South Korean models). But those lucky few will enjoy download speeds of 100 megabits per second - or about 10 times that of 3G - a technology deemed by many to be overrated.

The Scandinavian LTE networks will be available on a commercial basis to customers of TeliaSonera in early 2010. Until July they will pay just four Swedish kronor (35p) a month for the service - afterwards climbing to a more realistic 599 kronor (£51).

In Slough, the LTE network is just a trial by O2. But it comes not a moment too soon for UK mobile phone operators, who fear the 3G network could soon slow to a crawl under the strain of millions of new smartphones and people using lightweight netbooks to access the internet on the move.

Upgrading 3G networks to LTE could solve this. Tim Watkins, vice president of Huawei, the company conducting the trial with O2, says: "Long Term Evolution technology will be able to handle up to 20 times as much data and allow more bandwidth-hungry applications."

But while TeliaSonera moves into Finland, where it has just bought LTE rights, and considers purchasing part of the LTE spectrum in a forthcoming Danish auction, O2 and its competitors will have to wait. In Britain there will be no auction of the LTE spectrum until the technology that currently uses it - analogue TV - is turned off after the big switch to digital is completed in 2012.

But even that schedule is looking ambitious following new reports that people using LTE can knock out their cable televisions - and even those of their neighbours.

Analysts at Credit Suisse told the Independent: "The particular concern is that cable TV systems - wiring and set-top box - operate at frequencies ranging up to 800 to 900Mhz and that digital LTE signals being sent in the air at this frequency interfere with signals being sent over cables at the same frequency."
 
It is a serious problem and must be sorted out before any auction can take place, add industry insiders. ·