
- Technological forecasting,
- Telecommunication,
- Wireless communication systems
The number of wireless mobile communication service subscribers has reached 4.6 billion worldwide in 2009, and mobile revenues are expected to be over $1 trillion around 2012 according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (ITU, 2010). A significant number of studies have been done to forecast the growing market and evaluate the new generation technology, the Beyond 3 Generation (B3G). However, there is no study forecasting when any of these new technologies will be commercialized. This paper presents a technical framework for forecasting the commercialization timeline of B3G technologies and provides insight on technology trajectories from 1G to 4G. The results show that a combination of technical parameters can explain heterogeneous wireless mobile communication technologies. Three parameters selected include channel bandwidth, channel bit rate, and data capacity for technical framework.
This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, Vol. 22, Issue 8, p. 925-943 and is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2010.520472