This Monday, I have presented at a Mobile Monday Switzerland event in Fribourg. The topic of the event was Long Term Evolution (LTE, also known as 4G), the successor of the mobile standard 3G. This blog post is a brief summary of the slides available onSlideShare.net/Gbanga.
4G, the successor standard of 3G is designed to have higher bandwidths between 100 and 384 Mbit/s and quicker response rates of 10 ms latency. While the bandwidth of 3G (up to 56 Mbit/s) is already sufficient for mobile online games and small videos, the latency is low enough at all (designed for 70 – 120 ms latency, up to 2156 ms round-trip time with “poor tower system with barely enough signal”).
While in best case 120 ms latency results in a round trip time above 240 ms, it is not responsive enough to be cognitively appealing. In average, the latency is even worse. You notice that when using your browser, the Foursquare app or Facebook app on the road: endless loading of pages, loading of venues and friends feed lists.
With 4G, everything will be better. Reliable feedback loops will make it possible to not only have HTML5-based web apps for real-time online gaming on the mobile, but also introduce a new field of streaming games, for instance, cloud-based gaming service Gaikai.
Gbanga is confident that mobile gaming will move to mobile web-based apps where users do not have to install games anymore. Technologies necessary are HTML5 which should become available on most phones and faster and more responsive networks (better 3G or the new 4G).
The slides “HTML5 & LTE: Mobile web apps and games require fast and responsive networks” are available on SlideShare.net.