For ages, the idea of a single standard for a cellular wireless generation has seemed like a desirable pipedream.
Now that it's possible, what are people saying?
"The old debates around TDMA, CDMA, and GSM weren't very productive. So we need to encourage folks to merge WiMAX into LTE," Arun Sarin, Vodafone's CEO, told the Mobile World Congress.
Earlier this month, Sean Maloney, Intel's chief sales and marketing officer, said Intel is 'actively looking' at harmonisation of Wimax and 4G. and that its WiFi/Wimax chip-set being introduced this year, could also be used for LTE.
"Technically, it is quite feasible: both are OFDMA in DL, both support up to 20MHz TDD & FDD, similar MIMO structures both are IP-based etc", says Rupert Baines, vice president of marketing at PicoChip, "while LTE has far faster frames, this is one of the things "To Do" in 16m; while the uplink is different you could add a compatible mode. There are some significant differences, but nothing you could not bridge if you wanted to: for example, 16m and Release 9 having both backwards compatibility and a unified mode."
However, besides the issue of do-ability there's an issue of desirability.
"Whether it is desirable depends on a balance of two things", says Baines, "having competition between standards drives innovation and choice, but having a unified standard drives economies of scale - which matters more? I think that the merger would be good: increased volume, reduced price more competition within a standard, more innovation and lower prices in a virtuous circle."
Rene Penning de Vries, CEO of NXP, said: "It would be great for the industry, and the world, to have one standard," but he warned: "As we've seen in the battles in other domains, it's not easy to get one standard."
He reckons the LTE-Wimax battle would be fought on three issues: politics, the ability to re-use the baseband infrastructure because of the massive investments in it, and spectrum efficiency.
"But I doubt if the deciding element will be spectrum efficiency," said de Vries.
"The old debates around TDMA, CDMA, and GSM weren't very productive. So we need to encourage folks to merge WiMAX into LTE," Arun Sarin, Vodafone's CEO, told the Mobile World Congress.
Earlier this month, Sean Maloney, Intel's chief sales and marketing officer, said Intel is 'actively looking' at harmonisation of Wimax and 4G. and that its WiFi/Wimax chip-set being introduced this year, could also be used for LTE.
"Technically, it is quite feasible: both are OFDMA in DL, both support up to 20MHz TDD & FDD, similar MIMO structures both are IP-based etc", says Rupert Baines, vice president of marketing at PicoChip, "while LTE has far faster frames, this is one of the things "To Do" in 16m; while the uplink is different you could add a compatible mode. There are some significant differences, but nothing you could not bridge if you wanted to: for example, 16m and Release 9 having both backwards compatibility and a unified mode."
However, besides the issue of do-ability there's an issue of desirability.
"Whether it is desirable depends on a balance of two things", says Baines, "having competition between standards drives innovation and choice, but having a unified standard drives economies of scale - which matters more? I think that the merger would be good: increased volume, reduced price more competition within a standard, more innovation and lower prices in a virtuous circle."
Rene Penning de Vries, CEO of NXP, said: "It would be great for the industry, and the world, to have one standard," but he warned: "As we've seen in the battles in other domains, it's not easy to get one standard."
He reckons the LTE-Wimax battle would be fought on three issues: politics, the ability to re-use the baseband infrastructure because of the massive investments in it, and spectrum efficiency.
"But I doubt if the deciding element will be spectrum efficiency," said de Vries.
Subscribe to this blog's feed