Money making opportunities on offer from LTE

Data, data, data. We all want it; we can’t get enough of it. It’s an intrinsic part of the increasingly frenetic life we all lead. Phones or tablets in hand, we’re constantly checking our screens, whether it’s to track the latest sales figures, view our Twitter feeds, watch a video or order that ‘must-have’ item.

LTE is a great enabler for satisfying that need as it takes us forward into the fourth generation of mobile networks.

The framework of the architecture that will give us high data rates and high capacity is set out. But how to bridge the divide from the older established confines of 3G networks and achieve that data-rich state? The applications and revenue opportunities aren’t just there on a plate: they need to be created and we’ve got to work those out for ourselves.

Storage in the cloud

One of the most obvious ones is cloud-based storage. It’s high on everyone’s lists these days and LTE provides a perfect partner for the current obsession with storing data off-site. It allows you to move your business off-grid to take advantage of low premises and labour costs and then to link efficiently between sites. On the other side of the cloud, operators are able to charge for providing storage as well as for hosting applications, for access licenses and for bandwidth usage.

Life on the road…

If you’re a logistics operator, LTE gives you the chance to better manage your fleet: to track your vehicles, to obtain diagnostic information about your vehicles, to monitor driver behaviour. And all road users will be able to benefit from the provision of high quality real-time information about the route they’re travelling. That news might result in their deciding to change the route they’ve selected or modifying their speed because of road conditions that lie ahead. Equally it might serve to give them information about points of interest they are passing or provide some other element of traffic management.

… and in the air

For other applications that are simply too dangerous or tricky for humans to be involved in, LTE-based cameras mounted on drones can come into play. They might survey the scene immediately after a disaster has taken place and send back video footage or can be used to check or enter buildings; they can be used in search and rescue operations; they can monitor traffic and crowds.

The future’s here now

A bit futuristic you may think? While LTE certainly represents the way to the future, it’s all feasible now. There are plug and play modules already on the market such as the u-blox series of TOBY-L2 data modems available from Alpha Micro in a number of variants. This allows them to be used in a variety of different international markets depending on the national variant or specification.

So it could be that data, data, data will let developers into the money, money, money environs of “the rich man’s world”!