The competition between Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) is heating up for the upcoming 4G network. The rival technology standards are competing to be the future of mobile telephony are gearing up for the new generation bandwidth.
The WiMax standard is backed by chipmaker Intel while Qualcomm Inc that makes chips for LTE-enabled devices has been a strong supporter of LTE standard. Indian telecom players are evaluating whether to use the Wimax technology or TD-LTE-Advanced technology. The LTE-Advanced standard is expected to be fully ready only by next year while the Wimax standard has been in place from the last five years.
A new upgraded revision of Wimax version is also being developed and is expected to be rolled out by the end of this year and it will match the LTE-Advanced. The new version will also be compatible with the older allowing devices made for this standard to also work when it is rolled out.
The number of broadband users in the country is only nine million that translates to about 1% of broadband penetration. This offers huge market opportunity for telecom service providers and manufacturers of devices and will impact the future of the technology on which they choose to base their software and hardware.
The Indian telecom operators are now choosing either worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMax) or long-term evolution (LTE) standard for offering their broadband services after the government recently concluded auctions for 3G and Broadband spectrum.
The wireless standard technology is determined by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ITU sets benchmark for each generation and decides which standard is to be adopted worldwide.
ITU has invited developers to propose technologies that could qualify as 4G. The ITU has set some 4G standards like data rate of one gigabit per second with stationary signal recipient and the mobile transmission station and
100 megabits per second when recipient moves at a high speed.
The ITU announced in October 2009 that it received submissions from six 4G candidate. It examined the entries until June this year when it filed its final evaluation reports. The formal launch is expected next year.
