HSBC Holdings Plc said yesterday that Long Term Evolution (LTE) would beat Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) to become the mainstream fourth-generation (4G) technology worldwide.
There has been a tug-of-war over whether LTE or WiMAX will become the “golden” standard. The result of the battle has become clear as major global telecom operators such as NTT DoComo Inc, China Mobile Communications Corp (中國移動通信), AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc have jumped on the LTE bandwagon.
“We believe this time around, the US will finally be the leader in telecommunications. Recently Verizon and AT&T have invested over US$18 billion [NT$573.77 billion] in LTE spectrum licenses combined,” Tucker Grinnan, regional telecoms research analyst at HSBC said yesterday after the LTE World 2008 conference held in Taipei.
“We can anticipate this technology coming to consumers in late 2009 or 2010,” he said.
However, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation’s top three mobile carriers, have taken a wait-and-see attitude on the 4G development in Taiwan.
LTE PLATFORM
LTE is an entirely new radio platform technology, which allows for data transmission at 10 to 15 mega bits per second.
“It can be thought of as using radio waves further down in frequency to allow for longer wavelengths, larger coverage area, bigger and fewer stations and, most importantly of all, greater reach to mobile clients,” Grinnan said.
Qualcomm Inc controls most of the patents for LTE technology.
WiMAX, on the other hand, provides wireless transmission of data ranging from point-to-point links to full mobile cellular-type access.
LIMITED APPEAL
There is a market for WiMAX, but Grinnan sees it as limited to computing devices such as laptops, personal digital assistants and digital cameras, rather than cellphones.
Intel Corp has been a strong proponent of WiMAX technology from the very beginning as part of its future laptop technology.
Due to Intel’s strong influence on the vendor community, Taiwan has been big on WiMAX as well. The government has been a strong supporter of the technology, recently auctioning off WiMAX licenses to Global Mobile Corp (全球一動) and Tatung InfoComm Co (大同電信).
The apparent advantage of WiMAX technology lies in its less expensive intellectual property rights, which average US$25 per chipset, Grinnan said.
But WiMAX does not have voice capability and Internet calling currently struggles with poor reception, which is why Grinnan does not see WiMAX being adopted by major telecom operators around the world.
“Chunghwa and Far EasTone have only recently seen its 3.5G efforts being paid off,” the analyst said.
“Taiwan, for some peculiar reason, has a very low data-as-a-percentage-of-revenue number of only 10 percent, which is almost the same as that in India, while the US and the rest of the world experiences a 25 percent rate,” he said.
It is not difficult to see why the three carriers are hesitant to select either technology immediately.
“Low commuting time and low adoption of simplified Chinese characters are probably two of many reasons why 3.5G has encountered such resistance in Taiwan,” Grinnan said.
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