LTE will have to get its skates on if it's not to let WiMax get established as a wireless broadband data service before it can get significantly deployed, now that Clearwire is saying it will start a limited WiMax service in the US this year.

"LTE will go into deployment quicker than the other standards have done. The standard will probably be finalised early next year with 2011 for early stage deployments", picoChip co-founder and COO, Peter Claydon, told Electronics Weekly, "WiMax will be quicker. LTE needs to put its skates on to catch up with WiMax. There's pressure to make it happen faster because of WiMax."

picoChip has been shipping WiMax chips in several thousands a month quantities to the Sprint Nextel operation in the US which was renamed first Xohm, and then Clearwire, and is now backed by Google, Time Warner, Intel and Comcast.

Agreeing with Claydon's LTE roll-out timescale is the chairman of the UMTS Forum, Jean-Pierre Bienamé, who said: "I am confident we can have the first LTE commercial deployments by 2010, and have widespread deployments during 2011."

This puts pressure on LTE-adopters AT&T and Verizon in the US, and DoCoMo in Japan, to accelerate their LTE introduction schedules.

"In Japan, KDI is doing WiMax, and DoCoMo is doing LTE," added Claydon, "there will be pressure DoCoMo's suppliers to say: 'Don't let KDI get a headstart'."

DoCoMo's main supplier of LTE equipment is NEC. In the US, AT&T and Verizon has gone for LTE, and Alcatel-Lucent is trialling LTE equipment with Verizon.

The first WiMax network to be deployed for Clearwire, in Washington-Baltimore, was built by Samsung which is a strategic investor in picoChip. Motorola is building a WiMax network in Chicago and Nokia Siemens Networks is involved in other budding network deployments.

See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining, authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor industry, from someone who knows. Sign up for the Mannerisms eNewsletter.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Wireless, a roundup of content related to wireless communications.