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Intel says WiMAX and LTE should be combined
Vodafone's Arun Sarin was one of the first to say it. Now Intel's Sean Maloney is touting the idea. Should competing standards WiMAX and LTE be unified into one standard?
Maloney, who is the executive vice president, general manager, sales and marketing group at Intel, says that two standards should be harmonized because they are about "80 percent" similar but that WiMAX is a couple years ahead of LTE. He also said that customers will be confused by the competing 4G technologies. Maloney says that Intel is looking into ways to integrate the two technologies and it is technically possible for Intel to create a chip set that could be used for WiMAX and LTE.
Of course, this news comes just a day after Intel announced that it is preparing to re-enter the mobile-phone market. Intel's CEO Paul Otellini told the Financial Times that as mobile devices become more powerful and adoption of computer-like applications rises, Intel is in a position to make inroads into the mobile-phone market.
For more on this story:
- see this BBC article
Related stories:
Vodafone CEO: WiMAX has a home in LTE.
Intel to re-enter mobile-phone market.
Comments (3) | Post a comment
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | June 3, 2008 - 2:05pm
its interesting how all the WiMAX supports are calling for this and not the LTE supporters. I Don't see Ericsson calling for LTE to be combined with WiMAX. This is like HD-DVD saying that it now wants to be combined with BluRay.
Posted by Anonymous | June 3, 2008 - 6:20pm
Since when is Vodafone a WiMAX-only supporter? The LTE standard isn't even completed yet, so if they were smart, they'd make it WiMAX-compatible so they could invade WiMAX' market space. These merger suggestions recognize that it's counterproductive to have dualing standards. Ericsson appears to be the only systems company trying to leverage their dominance into future dominance (and I don't blame them - yet it's a lazy act). Who knows what back-room spin and financial pressure they put on operators claiming smooth 3G to LTE transition when there's no such thing. Major overhaul of cell sites is needed to upgrade to either LTE or WiMAX. The big competition here is in subscriber stealing. Verizon wants Sprints customers, so they're not about to back WiMAX (another lazy position to take). Maybe the "invisible hand" of the free market and the power of Internet technology inflection points will surprise us all.
Posted by Garth Freeman | June 5, 2008 - 8:05pm
Is this the first acknowledgement by Intel that WiMAX as a standalone technology is doomed? 250 million 3G/HSPA commercial users worldwide from 180+ tier 1 national telcos compared to a few hundred thousand WiMAX users from a couple of dozen actual commercial 3rd tier operators is no future for WiMAX as a mainstream technology moving forward. Of course it makes sense to unify the technologies if it is possible, at least then the wonders of WiMAX will be deployed at frequencies that will actually allow it to work rather than the fantasy of 3.5GHz and 5.xGHz.
