Have we reached peak 4G?: A regular column on the information industries

It simplifies life to treat generations of mobile technologies as lasting for a decade before being overtaken by the next improvement. Thus, 3G can be said to have arrived in roughly 2000 and to have petered out by 2010, whereupon 4G – effectively a synonym for LTE – began to establish itself. On that basis, it should now be petering out to be replaced by 5G.

There is some support for this hypothesis. Table I contains a best estimate of the number of LTE launches, somewhat arbitrarily divided by region. These are exclusively the launches made by operators with nationwide...