Clearwire moves some eggs out of WiMax basket, to trial LTE 34

Ooops! EVOlution might leave some droids-of-the-week behind. How's that 4G surcharge feeling now in the unserviced areas (most of them)?

Wow.....could be a real reason why no new Palm hardware. Cell companies need to make up there minds on what there next gen service will be so cellphone makers can build there next gen phone. Kinda like what comes first.....chicken or the egg.

Palm is working on a new device?

I can't say this analysis makes much sense. Sprint currently owns 56% or so of Clearwire, so if Clearwire switches technology all it means is Sprint's 4g will go from being wimax to LTE. And Sprint execs have been saying as much when they've been asked about wimax vs. LTE.

This isn't surprising. Clear has said they weren't married to Wimax and Sprint has said the same thing. Wimax's availability lead vs LTE was originally something like 2-3 years but has kept shrinking. Yes, Wimax on Clear will reach 120 million people in the US this year, but, with the LTE rollout beginning in 2010, LTE will probably match this by end of 2011. With most handset and equipment manufacturers behind LTE instead of Wimax, Clear is bowing to the inevitable reality that LTE appears to be the long-term winner and they will have to switch over or else their network will have higher costs, less choice for customers, and less revenue from network sharing agreements.

Overall, it's a good thing. If Clear ends up switching to LTE, all major carriers in the US will be behind one standard for the first time and that will mean better coverage/roaming, better choice of handsets (and being able to continue to use your existing handset if you switch networks - assuming universal phones could handle some of the remaining incompatibilities*).

Clear has said that switching to LTE would be relatively straight-forward - being a software change. No doubt the trial is meant to validate their software and work through some of the details (options) on how they would make the migration and cutover. Supposedly, they could support both Wimax and LTE simultaneously while they switch Wimax users to LTE.

*Note that, though the networks would all be supporting a unified 4G standard, US handsets might still be incompatible when it comes to the 2G/2.5G/3G protocols that they support (Verizon/Sprint will still be supporting CDMA/EVDO, whereas ATT/TMobile will support GSM/HDSPA). Also, please note there is still no unified standard for 4G voice AFAIK.

+1 for the graphic

I'd like to direct EVERYONE to this link, which (at least to this guy) seems to show that LTE and WiMAX will live in harmony and will not spell bad for Sprint or Palm.
http://www.4gwirelessjobs.com/articles/article-detail.php?WiMAX-versus-L...

"There had always been speculations about the competing wireless technologies in the past, such as GSM versus CDMA. In this battle the scenario was different, where both the technolgies had a completely different interface for their operation, but CDMA proved to be far beyond GSM considering the number of subscribers in the market. It was also said that CDMA performs better than the GSM based interface. Every upcoming technology wants to surpass its competitor in some way or the other. At present, a similar scenario is observed with WiMAX and LTE. WiMAX deploying companies are in a rush to establish their very high-speed IP-based technology worldwide before LTE begins to mark its presence in the market.

WiMAX is being deployed at a steady pace worldwide and will try to grab major customers in the market. One must not forget the fact that in the U.S., North America's two leading wireless providers, namely, AT&T and Verizon Wireless has been roped to provide LTE services in U.S. And one must also not forget that Clearwire and other major vendors of WiMAX have already developed WiMAX base stations and is far beyond LTE deployment at present.

WiMAX would provide backhaul to the large customers and LTE may be roped in to provide access to them after 5 to 10 years down the lane. Originally WiMAX was being designed as a backhaul technology which may prove this technology to be a strong backhaul service provider. Neither of the technologies would displace eachother as the customers will have a choice of selecting the best option viable to them by considering the most reliable service provider, which is bound to be diversified within the masses.

Since Wi-Fi cannot be replaced totally by either WiMAX or LTE due to its vast recognition and usage by customers, it does not seem that LTE or WiMAX would compete thoroughly with each other, but rather be dependent on each other to provide valuable and high-speed services to their consumers with effect to their strengths and advantages."

best graphic EVER!