30 October 2007

4G Standards

I found this article in BusinessWeek interesting. The article describes the upcoming technology battle between Qualcom's UMB, GSM-based LTE, and next generation WiMAX for dominance in the 4G environment. One of the interesting things to me is that apparently Verizon Wireless, a CDMA-based carrier, is considering changing its technology to LTE. To me, this makes sense given that it is partly owned by Vodafone, and that its target market is more upscale and is therefore more likely to travel internationally. I am surprised that it has taken this long, and that they haven't followed Korean carriers in moving to HSDPA for the high end. Sprint, of course, has already declared WiMAX as their next generation standard. This seems to leave Qualcomm with few major backers. Still, this battle is far from over, it seems ...



Update (2007-11-8): I came across this item that is relevant to this topic. Does this change your sense of where this is going?

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