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Vodafone CEO: WiMAX has a home in LTE
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Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin argued that we need about one sixth of the number of operating systems out there in the market and that WiMAX could find a place within the LTE standard. The executive made the provocative marks during the opening keynote here at the GSMA's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
"We have to narrow the range of operating systems," Sarin said. "We have 30 or 40 operating systems right now, if we had three or five operating systems, then that would be a good thing. Let the marketplace decide whether its Symbian, Microsoft, Android, LiMo or Linux 3.0 or whatever it is," Sarin said. "But we cannot have 30 of these."
Sarin also gave some advice to carriers: Don't buy phones that will have unsupported operating systems in five years. "There will be that phone manufacturer who says 'I can provide this for you and I can provide a little bit of differentiation with our operating system,' but in the near term, it is seductive to go down that path because you will win in the short term. When you win in the near term, you lose in the long term because you are stuck and cannot go with innovations."
Last year Sarin gave a keynote that urged the GSM community to push the LTE standard along since WiMAX was way ahead in its development, but Sarin seems pleased with progress in mobile broadband regardless.
"I think LTE has made real improvements in the last twelve months, and I would say WiMAX has made some progress as well," Sarin admitted. "The issue for me is simply resources in our industry: We only have a finite number of R&D engineers and we split them into three camps, then we would be diluting what we can do in the future. LTE standard is an encompassing standard, an accommodating standard--and as I said a few moments ago--there is a TDD section that I think WiMAX could fit into." -Brian
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | February 13, 2008 - 4:37am
Why should wimax be part of LTE. Mobile Wimax is already a commercial reality, as Mr. Sarin said last year, whereas LTE standard is just in its first stage (under pressure, most likely to show off during Barcelona GSMA).
He is talking nonsense, being the key driver of LTE, Sarin has been debit on this multi technology focus. He better uses his energy to let LTE be part of Mobile Wimax. Mobile Wimax anyway paved the way for LTE, as LTE will now start using a substancial piece of Mobile Wimax development, starting with copying OFDMA.
Like to see more critisism in articles. Furthermore Fiercewireless is doing a great job!
Posted by Anonymous | February 14, 2008 - 12:46pm
I like the previous comment.3 years back Arun said Data will never be a key driver or take iff. And Vodafone was very careful in adopting a pure data strategy. This was with some BBC interview he was doing. And look what is happening now. Having been in this industry for 16 years now, we have leaders like this sometimes talking crap.
Posted by Amitabh Kumar | February 22, 2008 - 2:01am
It is quite unlikely that mobile WiMAX will become a part of the LTE. Just about as unlikely as WiFi could become a part of 3G or LTE. There will be devices which will support both types of access and this is perhaps what was meant.
WiMAX as a technology has been designed to stand on its own and devices which use WiMAX as connectivity are emerging. These devices or chipsets will work as ubitiquously as the WiFi or Bluetooth.
WiMAX is also about open IP based architecture and is not bogged down by legacy architectures grown on top of voice networks today.
Amitabh Kumar
www.wimax-home.com
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