WiMax and LTE do not meet the 4G standard

If someone is trying to sell you the equipments or services in 4G wireless these days, do not believe in them.
Actually, both WiMax and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) do not meet 4G standard (Mobile Technology 4th generation), according to the International Telecommunication Union Radio communication Sector (ITU-R). On Thursday October 21st, 2010, the group announced it had finished its assessment of submissions for the 4G standard, also called IMT-Advanced (IMT - Advanced). Based on that group’s decision, to actually sell 4G, many telecommunication firms will have to choose one of the two future technologies, called LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced. The second type, all known as IEEE 802.16m, or WiMAX Release 2.

However, it does not stop providers of advertising current services and upcoming services as 4G.
For Clearwire, the Wimax operator in the US, the 4G label indicates a progress beyond 3G, Mike DiGioia, Clearwire spokesman, said. “WiMax and LTE products are about birth, all are advanced enough to overcome the 3G networks to show that they are moving forward”, he said.
“The definition of ITU current techniques does not affect our plans in launching the large scale LTE network first in the world later this year. All of us are the real people who are using the real products and services”, spokesman Jeffrey Nelson of Verizon Wireless (USA) wrote in a message by e-mail.
In fact, the proponents of Wimax and LTE mobile often conflict with the questions of standards and “4G” label. Some people supporting LTE said that WiMax is not a successor to 3G, but LTE is born with strong supports from prestige mobile operators. WiMax coming from the data networking world, is enthusiastically backed by Intel. Now, both the two systems are not officially called 4G.
However, it is worth noting that despite known as 4G, it does not mean that LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced products will be compatible. They simply both meet the criteria that ITU-R set for 4G.The 4G standard target is to achieve 100 Mbps downloading when moving with high speed and 1Gbps when moving with low speed.
Although they have not been sold, the two future technologies are shaped. IEEE 802. 16m is expected to be ratified later this year, and the WiMax Forum expects to begin certifying products under its WiMax Release 2 specification in the fourth quarter of next year.
Samsung said its tests of pre-standard 802. 16m achieve the downloading speed of 330 Mbps. Although it is a test without users sharing the bandwidth, it still shows a big jump compared with the current WiMax, which often gives users from 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps, and sometimes up to 10Mbps, according to Clearwire. Verizon operated its LTE network with the speed of 5 Mbps to 12 Mbps in the real world.
WiMax and LTE mark significant advances from 3G, because they use IP network (Internet Protocol) and are designed from the beginning for data, Tolaga Research analyst Phil Marshall said. But to meet the standard for a new technology generation, they must have a large increase in performance like one of the upcoming standards with IMT-Advanced. He supposed that the distance must be increased to 10 times.
According to Marshall, many telecommunication firms would not deploy the next generation technologies until 2014 or 2015.

Posted in: Network