To demonstrate WiMAX (News - Alert) can co-exist with LTE, wireless broadband service provider Clearwire Corp. has plans to conduct 4G long-term evolution “LTE (News - Alert)” technology trials. Besides achieving speeds ranging from 20 to 70 Mbps, the new trails also exhibit Clearwire’s multi-mode capability.
Due to the global dominance of the 2.5 GHz - 2.6 GHz spectrum band, a number of large wireless operators are expected to participate with Clearwire on these tests. However, no details were given. The tests will be conducted in the fall and throughout early next year in Phoenix, Arizona, the service provider said.
John Saw, Clearwire's chief technology officer, said “Clearwire's unmatched spectrum and all-IP network make us the only service provider in the U.S. able to conduct tests of this nature and on this scale." "As we have consistently stated, we remain technology agnostic, but WiMAX provides us with unique advantages to meet the needs of our customers today. Ultimately, consumers don't care about technical acronyms, but they do care about quality and affordable Internet services that work where and when they want, and that's what we're focused on delivering. Part of our technical due diligence at Clearwire is to be prepared to leverage a number of possible opportunities as we future-proof our network, and that's the goal of these tests," added Saw.
These tests will be in collaboration with Huawei (News - Alert) Technologies, the infrastructure provider who deployed the world's first commercial LTE network in Europe, using the same spectrum band and flexible base station platform that Clearwire utilizes in the United States, said Clearwire. Concurrently, added Clearwire, it will also be testing LTE on Samsung (News - Alert) Electronics' common base station platform which is currently used for the service providers mobile WiMAX deployments.
To see how end-user devices can benefit from a potential multi-mode WiMAX/LTE network, Clearwire will be closely working with 4G semiconductor supplier Beceem (News - Alert) and a few others to be named later, according to Clearwire.
Saw continued, in a statement, "The 2.5 GHz spectrum band is universally allocated for global 4G deployments, so it has the potential to create one of the world's most robust ecosystem across billions of devices. We believe this commonality will result in a massive diversity of mobile devices and applications, at comparably low costs, due to unmatched economies-of-scale.”
Aside from conducting both FDD and TDD LTE tests simultaneously, Clearwire will also test WiMAX co-existence with both FDD LTE and TDD LTE to confirm the flexibility of its network and spectrum strength to simultaneously support a wide-range of devices across its all-IP network. Meanwhile, Clearwire is now projecting 3 million total WiMAX subscribers by the year-end, a significant increase from an earlier forecast of just over 2 million subscribers. These numbers were presented during a financial conference call this week by CEO Bill Morrow.