WiMax loses the battle for next-gen mobile

WiMax has lost the battle as the technology for next-generation mobile links, and the industry should co-operate to get LTE up and running, according to a leading mobile strategist.

Björn Ekelund, head of ecosystems and research at ST-Ericsson, told the Future World Symposium in London that "to put it bluntly, LTE won".

Ekelund explained that WiMax is an interesting technology, but was "never really able to show the complete solution with all the infrastructure that you need for the modern network - mobility, and billing, and content, services and so on".

"A number of operators, for instance in the US, offer wireless broadband services but there is no offer of telecom-like services. And we know that some of these operators are contemplating switching to LTE for the next generation," he said.

LTE provides a wireless standard accepted around the world for the first time in history, but its implementation presents formidable problems that need a combined approach from the industry, according to Ekelund.

One of the biggest hurdles is that there are too many different frequency bands approved for use in different countries, making it difficult to manufacture a single phone that would sell across the world and gain the economies of scale needed to make it affordable.

"A 3G phone may have to support four bands. An LTE phone has to be able to support around 11," Ekelund said.

This is particularly tricky for handset designers because LTE needs to double up on the 5MHz or 10MHz bands to reach its peaks speeds, and no contiguous bands are available in some countries.

Other challenges include the enormous number of legacy phone standards, meeting the growing demand for mobile compute power, and extending battery life.

But Ekelund said that LTE is on track to hit peak data rates of 1Gbit/s by 2014, although it is up to operators what speeds will be available to the user.