THE cellular/wireless players in this country are a lucky lot.

They don’t have to pay billions of dollars for a spectrum which their counterparts globally do. What they do is ride on the spectrum and earn huge margins. Their margins are among the highest in Asia if not the world.

The next wave of spectrum awards will be happening soon. This time it is for long-term evolution (LTE). This is said to be the fourth generation of cellular technology or 4G.

Bet your last dollar that there will be no bidding process, no hefty payment for the spectrum, only a token sum and nine local companies are likely to get bite-sized of 20Mhz each of the 2.5G/2.6G piece of this prized commodity.

Kudos to them, yet many have all the excuses for bad quality of service.

In the cellular world thus far, there are four defined generations of cellular technology. 1G was all analog, 2G was digital but speeds ware slow and data limited.

That’s when we first got the taste of SMS. Then came the 2.5G which gave slightly higher data capacity and speed.

The much-hyped 3G allowed for downstream rate of 2 megabits per second and more.

Voice was the killer application for the first few generations of cellular networks.

But data traffic has overtaken voice traffic and this trend is only going to accelerate, growing exponentially with widespread adoption of wireless broadband networks and smart devices.

4G is about higher speed and bigger capacity. The requirement for 4G is said to be peak data rate of 100Mbps for high-mobility applications such as mobile access.

About 1Gbps is required for low mobility applications such as nomadic/local wireless access and all should be Internet protocol-based solutions.

That means that the new 4G networks will allow users to stream mobile multimedia, such as TV broadcasts and online games, with speeds of up to 10 times higher than today’s third-generation, or 3G, networks.

This time around the government wants to be fair to all wireless and cellular players by dishing out spectrum to nine players, comprising four WiMAX and four cellular players and a new entrant, a company linked to billionaire Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukary.

With the 4G spectrum the players should have no reason to complain of being left out of the next generation of technologies.

Getting the spectrum is one thing, but putting it to good use is another.

In the past spectrum had been awarded in many ways with political patronage not excluded. Some players lobbied intensely for the spectrum only to sell it off for a handsome gain, while others had to be rescued. There are some that hoard and a few had been deprived of the spectrum, but there are also others that have helped changed the landscape of mobile broadband in the country.

It is good that the government is giving many more players a chance to have the 4G spectrum and it may not impose a huge fee so that players will not pass the spectrum cost to the users.

The idea is to make it easy for the players to roll out services so that they can serve the rakyat better and, hopefully, the players will not forget that in their quest to earn higher margins.

Deputy news editor B.K. Sidhu wishes all Malaysians a belated Happy 1Malaysia Day.