Comments on: Qualcomm May Slow Verizon's LTE Plans

By: WiMAX: A Dress Rehearsal for LTE’s Opening Night – GigaOM

WiMAX: A Dress Rehearsal for LTE’s Opening Night – GigaOM — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:18:01 +0000

[...] subscriber devices sold. Indeed, Qualcomm’s LTE chips for handsets may not be available until well into next year, and the industry has yet to settle on voice standards for LTE, which doesn’t offer the same [...]

By: Metro PCS To Launch LTE Network, New Phones in Late 2010

Metro PCS To Launch LTE Network, New Phones in Late 2010 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:33:05 +0000

[...] By Stacey Higginbotham | Tuesday, September 15, 2009 | 5:55 AM PT | 0 comments MetroPCS the prepaid phone company, said it will launch its fourth generation Long Term Evolution network in its major metropolitan markets in late 2010. The carrier will upgrade its current CDMA network with LTE gear from Ericsson, and its first phone capable of taking advantage of the faster LTE speeds will be a Samsung smartphone, according to a company release. Another milestone is that MetroPCS says it will offer its dual-mode LTE/CDMA smartphone in late 2010, a product that Verizon doesn’t plan to offer until 2011. This means in the U.S., MetroPCS may have the first dual-mode LTE smartphone if it can find the silicon radios to let those phones talk to both CDMA and LTE networks. [...]

By: Robert White

Robert White — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:50:51 +0000

So Verizon must feel the same way about Qualcomm that I feel about AT&T. To do CDMA they need Qualcomm and to do the iPhone, I need AT&T…

By: Verizon: Calling all LTE developers | Unfiltered

Verizon: Calling all LTE developers | Unfiltered — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:16:47 +0000

[...] head-start, considering LTE chipsets aren’t readily available yet. Deutsche Bank and several news reports have stated Qualcomm won’t begin shipping LTE chipsets until mid-2010. While several other [...]

By: Omar Moya

Omar Moya — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:12:57 +0000

Convergence is the key word, as mentioned in the previous post. WiMAX is not compatible with anything at the moment. Laying on a 2.6GHz network, and growing slowly city by city.

As for the U.S. this can be an option, as the deployment is being done, and the service started to be available. However, LTE represents a continuous service with handovers defined to HSPA, 3G Rel99, EDGE and even GPRS. Continuity with standarized interworking with existing networks, and quick deployment is what LTE offers.

WiMAX is very good, but as long as it is working by itself, in its own frequency, will most probably be adopted in certain markets only, and mightl never be a worldwide technology. While LTE chips will support all technologies (HSPA, EDGE) and will have continuous service.

By: » Friday’s Wireless Headlines Sidecut Reports

» Friday’s Wireless Headlines Sidecut Reports — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 06:12:30 +0000

[...] May Slow LTE: Will chip issues keep Verizon from having anything other than laptop dongles when it tries to launch LTE later this [...]

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:13:40 +0000

you really need to re-read the article. it is not about the standard but about supplying chips and qualcomm is a key supplier to many handset makers who do business with verizon, the leading proponent of LTE in the US.

By: Petabro

Petabro — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:03:40 +0000

Not true. Qualcomm is not in a position to control LTE as it controlled CDMA 2000. The industry takes long to move to the next standard.

By: Neil Frohm

Neil Frohm — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:16:34 +0000

Why wait for LTE? WiMax via Clearwire/Sprint 4G is available today in Baltimore and is planned to cover about 60-80 million people by the end of the year. Nothing unfortunate here–it’s here today. Other cities they say will launch this year:

“Sprint plans to deploy Sprint 4G service in many markets in 2009, including:

Atlanta, Honolulu, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Portland, Fort Worth, Seattle

Sprint also expects to launch service in multiple markets in 2010 including Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.”

Looks from their xohm.com site that there are about a dozen laptops already available with WiMax chips inside in addition to desktop and mobile modems.

By: Simon Gatt

Simon Gatt — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:24:16 +0000

That would be a pity; LTE promises to make convergence a reality, along with the promise of a really unified communications network. OK, getting the entire network to use the IP protocol is probably more important, but LTE provides the bandwidth as well as the backwards compatibility.
It is not the technology itself that is really interesting, mind. At least not to my non-tech thinking. It is what this can mean for the way we communicate and therefore the opportunities we can create and the things we can do.
Excuse a bit of fluff, but it is a fact that human achievement has been underpinned by communications and IT developments right from the emergence of our species. Think of the dramatic influence the development of language must have been, or the development of writing systems – you do not need to look only to computers.
Freeing communications completely would give an economic boost to the world at a time when it needs it most. This is why, to me, delays in getting LTE together are unfortunate.