LTE is really going for it

In my blog last week I tried to present some arguments which lead to the belief that LTE might take us out from the current recession.

After the current Mobile world congress the vibes coming out are very much in favour of LTE. It looks like an LTE onslaught. I must admit that the recent development in the LTE sector ahs really pushed the technology closer to the reality. These developments have really given a kick to the WiMax camp as well and one can see the nervousness in the WiMax camp.
Following are some of the recent LTE onslaught as I might say:

• Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson have already made LTE announcements.
• Motorola introduced its LTE base stations,
• Nokia announced a new version of its Flexi Multiradio base station that expands the technologies supported by the NSN line to cover GSM/EDGE, WCDMA/HSPA and LTE in a single unit.
• Ericsson introduced an evolved packet core portfolio for LTE networks so that HSPA operators can gracefully migrate to LTE.

Things are a really spicing up in the market especially with the operators already started playing mind games in terms of whom to choose their vendors for the LTE devices.

Just last week there was a report where it said that Verizon Wireless and Nokia are reportedly planning a partnership that might be an exclusive deal to create an "iconic" device to run on Verizon's Long Term Evolution (LTE) network.

Although not sure how true the above report is but it still was buzzing news. There is no doubt that whenever the announcement will come from Verizon regarding the very vendors it is choosing, it will be a surprise to everyone.

Just remember the last year where the industry was really struggling to put a strong hold on LTE. I still remember very well, last year all the talks were for WiMax and the Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin urged the vendor community to step up efforts on the LTE standard since WiMAX was ahead in its development. WiMAX may still be ahead this year, but LTE certainly has the momentum behind it.

Certainly WiMax and the news related to it will be around but what interests me is how some of the companies are now making LTE as their priority as the future broadband technology. It’s unbelievable that those companies who were once heavily pushing WiMAX have now jumped into the LTE market.

Wireless 20/20, for instance, used to be WiMAX 20/20, but now its on the LTE bandwagon.

It’s already reported that 26 operators have committed to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology out of which ten network operators are ready to launch their networks by 2010

Other companies have made some good progress in WiMAX, announcing new innovative products; still others appear to be threatened by the onslaught of LTE, trying to dub LTE as just another Long Term Excuse.