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.

WIMAX VS. LTE

The LTE technology that Nokia and the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) are pushing is an upgrade to existing GSM networks. The attraction to this technology had made even the CDMA operator, Verizon Wireless, to join the 3GPP trials. It is also a strategic decision, in order to be compatible with its European, GSM-based parent company, Vodafone. LTE looks like it can heal the GSM/CDMA rift that has divided the industry, as no major carrier has yet signed on with obvious CDMA 4G upgrade technology, Ultramobile Broadband (UMB).

LTE will have the following advantages:

• Fast, with peak data rates of 100 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload.
• It makes CDMA and GSM debates moot.
• It offers both FDD and TDD duplexing, which means the upload and download speeds don't have to be synchronous, so operators can better optimize their networks to use more upload channels.
• LTE will have lower latency, which makes real-time interaction on high band-width applications using mobiles possible.

3GPP LTE, one of the most advanced mobile communication technologies to date, is currently undergoing 4G technology standardization by the 3GPP This is the most likely technology to become the 4G standard, as many of the world's major operators and telecommunications companies are members of LTE/SAE (Long Term Evolution/System Architecture Evolution) Trial Initiative (LSTI). These companies include operators, such as Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile and Telecom Italia and vendors, Ericsson, Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens and LG Electronics. These are also the companies that will be considered to have the advantage in deploying first the 4G services.

WiMAX has certain advantages mainly over the Fiber to the home (FTTH) technology. When bundled with broadband internet access and IPTV, a WiMAX triple play becomes very attractive to residential subscribers. Given the QoS, security and reliability mechanisms built into WiMAX, the users will find WiMAX VoIP as good as or even better than voice services from the telephone company. It also offers a cost effective infrastructure with efficient use of spectrum. Currently, the average cost of WiMAX 802.16-2004 baseband has decreased from $35 to almost $20 today per subscriber.

4G proponents will serve as complements or upgrades to advance the 3G limitation to deliver video/TV and high speed Internet access. For WiMAX, there is a limitation of wireless bandwidth. For use in high density areas, it is possible that the bandwidth may not be sufficient to cater to the needs of a large clientele, driving potentially the costs high. But the main competitor for WiMAX today is the fiber and the wireline network that especially in the US is a real challenge for the residential users as the operators are deploying and growing really fast.