LTE - 4G not far away
Remember last year when everyone was talking about 3G, 3.5G and WiMax? A lot of articles came out (including mine; WiMax vs 3G.. Do They Compete) questioning which technology will become more popular. Nowadays, with the trials of LTE (Long Term Evolution - the next fourth generation technology) and its specification approval by the 3GPP, the comparisons moved away from 3G vs WiMax to 4G vs WiMax (as you can see from my latest post).
What I find interesting is that how the comparisons now shifted. Before, 3G had the head start because it was only an upgrade to the existing GSM networks and was already deployed but WiMax wasn’t ready and needed a whole new infrastructure. Now, its the opposite. 4G is not ready yet and won’t be until after a couple of years and on the other hand WiMAx is already being deployed. I guess having many different technologies always opens doors for comparison but at the end it depends on what is more convenient to the user and the availability of the technology (I’m saying that because some countries have not deployed UMTS and/or HSDPA yet, which in this case gives WiMax the opportunity to take over).
Back to LTE… LTE is an IP-based technology and promises a much higher data rate than 3G which is estimated to be about 100Mbps downlink (the recently Nokia Seimens completed trial resulted in 173Mbps downlink so it is increasing) and 50 Mbps uplink. Other features are that LTE promises to support 200 users per 5Mhz spectrum and have latency of 5ms. Comparisons between LTE and HSPA+ (3.5G) can be read here. LTE is still in trial version and is expected to commercially launch in 2010.
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