The battle is over between LTE and WiMAX for supremacy in the 4G wars, Alcatel-Lucent’s COO for wireless Patrick Plas said in a CNET report. He said mobile phone operators have overwhelmingly selected LTE over WiMAX.
Plas also said his company is "not putting a lot of effort" into WiMAX.
LTE handsets, conspicuously missing so far, will start appearing this year, he said. The current focus is on using LTE modems for PCs to access mobile broadband.
Dell’Oro Group
recently said Alcatel-Lucent is the second-largest WiMAX vendor, trailing only Motorola.
Most WiMAX deployments are being done by companies building their first mobile networks — companies such as Clearwire in the US, Yota in Russia and P1 in Malaysia.
Alcatel-Lucent competes in the LTE market with the likes of Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks.
The WiMAX versus LTE battle in the US is clearly slanted in LTE’s direction. AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the US’ two largest cellcos, have publicly committed to LTE, as has the cable TV operator Cox. Sprint and three cable TV operators — Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Brighthouse Networks — are reselling Clearwire’s WiMAX service. Sprint owns a majority of Clearwire but is not the controlling shareholder. Google, Intel, Motorola and the three cable TV operators have invested heavily in Clearwire.
Verizon Wireless is reportedly testing LTE and will begin deployment this year. AT&T is busy upgrading its network with the 3G technology HSPA and has said it’ll begin LTE deployment next year.
Every other existing cellco we’ve tracked has said it’ll deploy LTE, typically after upgrading their 3G networks with HSPA or HSPA+ technology. |
