Alltel drives another nail into Wimax coffin

THE POSSIBILITY of a single cellular standard that will work globally is drawing nearer. That standard is LTE (Long Term Evolution), otherwise known as 4G.

Curiously, evidence that this will be the case is drawn from a somewhat obscure US mobile operator – Alltel – by industry analyst, ABI Research.

"It is no surprise that Alltel chose LTE as its 4G technology, since the carrier usually mirrors choices made by Verizon Wireless," commented ABI's Nadine Manjaro. "Alltel's choice of LTE will help to ensure greater rural coverage for small and mid-sized cities in the United States and Canada."

Why does Alltel count given that it has 'only' 13 million subscribers? Well, the obvious reason is that it has joined by far the vast majority of US operators in picking LTE.

That leaves Sprint Nextel out on a limb backing 802.16e mobile Wimax. But wait. Only recently Germany's Deutsche Telekom (which own T-Mobile USA) was reportedly interested in acquiring Sprint Nextel. And T-Mobile is definitely an LTE fan.

So if the majority of the USA goes LTE; Vodafone and China Mobile back LT and even KDDI in Japan backs LTE, you'd have to be pretty bonkers to back an entirely different standard for 4G.

Even better, the INQ reckons that LTE and Wimax aren't mutually exclusive. LTE is a true 'cellular' standard in that it’s a fourth generation of network intended to provide mobile communications. That's voice and data not just data. So it would be feasible to implement the 'voice' bit of LTE and have your 4G data connexion entirely separate.

That said, ABI Research, for example, isn't saying that Wimax is dead. It's actually saying that the future lies with LTE. As ABI's Philip Solis says, "In five to ten years, LTE will surpass mobile Wimax in subscribers, and IMT-Advanced-compliant networks will arise from upgrades to 802.16m mobile Wimax and LTE-Advanced."

So in effect Solis is saying the same thing. If a network becomes IMT compliant, then it should be able to service the voice calls for anybody that walks into range with a suitably equipped mobile device.

Better start building some dual LTE and Wimax chipsets, then. µ