WiMAX vs. LTE? About as Important as GSM vs. CDMA

Maybe I’m wrong, but the framing of network platforms such as “WiMAX versus Long Term Evolution” as somehow conferring strategic advantage is starting to look about as much a non-issue as the earlier framing of the “GSM versus CDMA” choice as likewise conferring strategic advantage.

 

As it turns out, no such thing happened. Of the two largest U.S. mobile providers, one uses GSM and one uses CDMA. For the next generation, there will be no contest, both have chosen LTE.

 

In fact, even Clearwire, the leading champion of WiMAX, says it is designing its network to support LTE, “should LTE emerge as the market standard.” It would be hard to find anybody who wouldn’t now agree that LTE will be the leader globally, not simply in the United States, though some markets, such as China, will take another path.

 

People will argue about whether service providers using each platform have “as much bandwidth as they need,” or whether one of the contestants will get to market earlier with that bandwidth. Ultimately, the time to market issue will be close enough as not to matter.

 

And though some WiMAX supporters have been talking about a fairly different approach to the business model - offering something more akin to a mobile Internet than mobile voice pattern - there is in principle no reason why any of the contenders could not offer such plans and approaches.

 

In the end, winners and losers will not be determined by the choice of technology platform as by a wide range of other issues that typically determine market fortunes. To be sure, the choice of air interface could be important to the extent that one standard gets dramatically more support from device and software suppliers.

 

Given the broad support mobile providers are giving LTE, it is hard to bet against the proposition that LTE will be supported by a robust ecosystem. But dual- mode devices, able to support either air interface, would make moot such concerns in the WiMAX ecosystem, even if one worried about the number and importance of WiMAX-only devices and software.

 

There might yet be some reason to think WiMAX is "different" in some qualitative way from LTE. So far, I haven't seen it.