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With its worldwide subscriber rolls expected to quadruple this year and increase by a factor of 70 by 2016, 4G long term evolution (LTE) will play a pivotal role in the development of the wireless industry by driving the convergence of electronic devices, including smartphones, media tablets and mobile PCs.

"One of the problems bedevilling carriers is how to deliver faster broadband speeds to rural customers as they boast about the speeds their urban clients can get. SaskTel said Monday it will test a new approach starting in December in three Saskatchewan communities: Fixed data and voice wireless service using the LTE standard. The carrier announced from Bejing that it has signed an agreement with Huawei Technologies for a nine-month trial to see if the technology is economically feasible."

Networks are not in danger of running out of capacity just yet. Carriers have spent large sums buying up rights to the radio spectrum, and they're being creative about ways to squeeze more out of what they already have. (Exact speeds vary, but an LTE connection is typically 10 times faster than one provided by a 3G network.) The federal government licenses spectrum space, and wireless carriers and other companies have for many years bought up and hoarded licenses, anticipating the need to expand. But the largely unforeseen explosion in demand for wireless bandwidth, driven by the appearance of tablets and smart phones, has made it more urgent to ensure a supply for future use.  AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel says network traffic and the company's spectrum portfolio affect the kind of service that users receive in different areas. "We will continue to invest and innovate to make the best, most efficient use of available spectrum across our network," he says.

"Georges Nahon delivered a very inspiring keynote today before our panel of bloggers in which he shared his vision with regard to what is happening in IT in general, and in the Valley in particular. I will begin my account of Georges's visionary presentation by detailing his conclusions. As I always do, I have taken detailed notes of the pitch and they are made available at the end of this piece. If there is one thing that should be remembered from that pitch is that the Web is everywhere and in everything that will be happening in the future. Something which established players don't like according to the Head of Orange Silicon Valley. However, Nahon insisted on the fact that it won't be the same Internet we used to know."

Most top-tier network service providers have reported their Q1 2012 results, and we've seen the same trends continue from previous quarters: Legacy voice services from traditional providers continue to decline in favor of wireless substitution and replacement by digital (VoIP) services. Cable companies continue to see a net gain for digital voice, although the growth rate continues to be in the slow single digits; much of this net growth is driven by small businesses converting to VoIP.