Qualcomm announced plans to ship its first multi-mode Long Term Evolution (LTE) chipsets in the second quarter of 2009, expanding both its device and base-station chipset roadmaps to include LTE and three multi-mode mobile data modem chipsets to enable UMTS and CDMA2000 operators to upgrade to LTE and have backward compatibility to their existing 3G networks.
Qualcomm said the chipsets will support both FDD and TDD duplex modes and will support peak data rates of up to 50 Mbps on the downlink and 25 Mbps on the uplink.
Qualcomm also announced that Hutchison 3G, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Telstra have all agreed to trial the chip maker's HSPA+ chipsets later this year. The operators will use Qualcomm's MDM8200 chipset, which includes 64-QAM HSDPA for 21Mbps downlink data rates and 2x2 downlink MIMO for 28 Mbps downlink data rates. The expectation is that the high speed technology will be available as early as 2009.
For more about Qualcomm's LTE and HSPA+ plans:
- check out this article from telecoms.com