What is 4G? How it affects live in India?
It might sound a bit weird but there seems to be some connection between 4G and Reliance Jio and both of them seem to be promoting each other in India. There was little being talked about the ‘G’ factor in the Internet and telecom sector till the time when free Jio sim cards were distributed by Reliance group. It might be true that many of the Jio sim users exactly don’t know what G stands for in ‘4G’ . So, it is actually the 4th generation Sim cards and supports various advanced technologies succeeding 3G like high definition mobile TV, Video conferencing and many more to follow. From common sense, we can understand that 3G was better than 2G and hence, 4G telecom services are the best till now.
Understanding 4G technically
Technically speaking, 4G is the fourth generation of wireless mobile interchangeably with telecommunications technology, succeeding 3G. The term 4G has often been used LTE which stands for Long Term Evolution but actually LTE is the 4G wireless data format currently favored by most wireless carriers.
Why 4G is faster?
The much in news 4G technology performs faster than it’s predecessor due to below mentioned reasons:
- OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing is the main reason why 4G is faster than 3G. It sounds complicated, but it's the same technology used in Wi-Fi, ADSL broadband, digital TV and radio. OFDM is a technique for squeezing more data onto the same amount of radio frequency. It also reduces latency and interference. Data is split up and sent via small chunks of frequency in parallel, therefore increasing the capacity of the network.
- MIMO or Multiple-input and multiple-output, is another reason 4G is able to provide faster speeds. It is simply the use of multiple antenna arrays at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communication performance.
Although a common configuration found in most smartphones is a 2 x 2 MIMO, but 4 x 4 setup is also possible and this leads to faster speeds. Hence, with varying setups, one smarty phone could work at faster pace than another.
The 4G effect in India
There was growing need for speed in India with increasing use of Internet in nearly all spheres of life but not all people were really aware about the technicality of 2G, 3G and 4G technology. The 4G news spread like wild fire with the introduction of Jio from Reliance group. The free distribution of Reliance Jio Sim Cards just added fuel to the fire with more people getting interested in browsing Internet and chatting with their near ones over the high speed internet facility. Reliance Jio is not the only telecom company providing 4G services and almost all major players like Airtel, Idea and Vodafone users can access 4G facility with the respective plans.
Effective Utlilization of 4G in India
India is a country with huge population and great minds but we are also aware of the fact that after Reliance Jio, the people who didn’t actually required the 4G speed have been using it in order to access social networking apps and websites in order to connect with the friends and relatives. But the proper usage is done by the professional users in corporate and IT sector companies in order to improve the process of work being done. If course , with 4G internet, we have clarity in video conferencing and can have online business meetings with ease.
Need for educating and spreading awareness
India is a fast growing and developing economy and with great success like 4G comes great responsibility as well. Hence, the telecom companies should take steps and in some places are doing great job in educating rural people about proper usage of Internet.
Internet not only Facebook and Whats App
For some of our fellow Indians, Internet is still only facebook and whatsapp and it also not their fault but because of the easily operating apps on mobile which is one touch access. In order to make optimal use of the latest 4G Internet, we can gather more useful information from the web on how to make our lives better and improve the standard of living by generating more employment and educating the poor of our country. Like various NGO’s are making good use of emails and other social networking sites for raising donations or programs like educate a child.
Increased sale of 4G handsets and towers posing health hazards
With launch of Reliance Jio 4G Sim Cards that work only on 4G handsets, the demand increased manifold and mobile manufacturing companies earned good profit in the process. Like medicines having side effects, we’ve been reading about the serious threats from 2G and 3G towers. So, it is worth mentioning about the potential threats from 4G towers in India. The worst affected in human body is the brain from cell tower radiations s was reported by Deccan Chronicle in June 2014 about 25000 brain tumour cases in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. One can only imagine what is going to happen in the entire country.
Hence, like good thing about the 4G, there are some things which need to be taken care of. The difference between proper use and misuse also needs to be understood at all levels.
