Trials, Status, 4G Vendors and Players

Trials and Status

In 2008, Nokia installed a prototype base station for ongoing LTE tests at the top of the Heinrich Hertz Institut building in the center of Berlin, where interference typically degrades bandwidth. The first-of-its-kind test featured multiple users connected to the new base station, giving the 173Mbps throughput number some credibility as a real-world peak. Nokia also tested LTE throughput by putting terminals into cars and driving them up to 1km away from the base station. Verizon and AT&T are also testing it with Motorola equipment

WiMAX on the other hand is ahead of LTE as a personal broadband option. CDMA-based operator Sprint-Nextel, for its part, is banking on WiMAX as a 4G solution. The Sprint-Nextel's WiMAX-based Xohm service in Chicago indicate that the bandwidth and pings are excellent (roughly 3Mbps/1.5Mbps and 70ms, respectively), but the numbers are nowhere near the + 100Mbps/50Mbps that LTE promises in both directions.

4G Vendors and Players

A market restructuring with aggressive joint ventures and new players in broadband wireless could be a future highlight. The major 4G players in general are the current 3G players that invest in new Research and Development (R&D) projects and sources for the future of the mobile wireless. Recently, Alcatel-Lucent and Japan's NEC Corp formed a joint venture around LTE trials. Similarly, China Mobile joined Verizon Wireless and Vodafone in LTE standardization trials. China is a very interesting case, since their 3G networks is still in progress; soon the government will issue three licenses for high-speed third-generation mobile phone services and called for a merger of China Unicom and Netcom, two of its four biggest telecoms providers.

One of the WiMAX weaknesses is the lack of certification. The ITU recommendation adding WiMAX as an official 3G protocol is boosting the investment and the new spectrum auctions as in the US, for example, addressing the 700MHZ auctions. More than 100 WiMAX devices have been announced in 2008 and the fixed/portable wireless access equipment market has grown from $562 million to $ 1.2 billion in 2007. Additionally, Cisco is targeting WiMAX development as smart distributed wireless networking.