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What Will We Call the Convergence of WiMAX and LTE Technology - WiMAXLaTE maybe?
The GSM Association and Vodafone want to roll WiMAX into the LTE standard.
In what some might characterize as a slap in the face to the WiMAX Forum and other WiMAX proponents, the GSM Association CEO Rob Conway believes that WiMAX should become a subset of LTE and fulfill its roll as a niche technology business. This gem of interesting news comes out of the 2008 Mobile World Congress being held this week in Barcelona, Spain.
Vodafone's CEO Arun Sarin would seem to agree with this assessment from Mr. Conway. Sarin's take is that dividing up the limited number of R&D engineers and resources won't get us to the needful place of ubiquitous broadband infrastructure efficiently. Now what I find funniest about this is that we are very close to having Mobile WiMAX gear in the field, while LTE is, by most estimates, at least two years away.
It may occur to some that perhaps LTE should be a subset within the WiMAX standard instead, rather than putting the cart before the horse. I find this all very amusing actually as it is just an exercise in corporate politics and comfort levels. For many carriers who have deployed GSM, the LTE approach will be less disruptive to their operations to upgrade to this technology. WiMAX is somewhat more inherently disruptive in my opinion in terms of smooth upgrade. GSM carriers are just more comfortable with the LTE approach.
At the end of the day we will have both as competing standards and both with customers. And no, WiMAX proponents will not agree to make it a subset of LTE or vice versa. But what I do think may well happen in time is that the two technologies will converge essentially. In many, many ways they are very similar already. In all honesty did we NEED both an LTE and WiMAX standard even? Not really. Whichever one is ready first could probably handle the needs of both camps. But when has that ever had anything to do with how people actually choose to do things?
Tim Sanders,
www.TheFinalMile.net
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tags:
Don't want to burst bubbles...
Mr Sarin's comments were widely picked up by the press, but not so widely picked up was Hakan Eriksson (CTO of, erm, Ericsson) stating that WiMAX could not become part of LTE because LTE specs were agreed and R&D had been done to develop the existing, defined TDD variant of LTE.
That Arun Sarin, he's such a tease...