WiMax in 2010: Too little, too late?

"The cellular carriers are on an evolutionary path to LTE, [but] it is difficult to figure out when LTE will be a significant competitor and have material impact on WiMax adoption," Peter Stanforth, chief technology officer and co-founder of Spectrum Bridge, an online market for wireless spectrum, said in an email. While WiMax is finally gaining critical mass, LTE is still taking its first steps. AT&T, for instance, expects to make LTE service commercially available in 2011. Verizon has a faster timetable, saying it plans to have networks in 25 to 30 cities in 2010.

"It is true several carriers have said that they are going to start the LTE rollout soon, but when will it have enough coverage to be significant?" Stanforth asked. "If it's just a few base stations in a few major cities in order to say 'We have deployed LTE,' will consumers know or care?"

In an ABI research report from the second quarter of 2009, senior analyst Nadine Manjaro wrote, "Vendors will only begin shipping base station equipment in significant quantities in 2010, followed by full commercial launches in 2011."

While "many operators have been talking about re-use of existing equipment," ABI expects that "most ... base stations will have completely new baseband and RF components, because operators will generally try to keep the new LTE networks separate from their legacy networks," she wrote.

ABI predicts that there will be at best 34 million LTE users at the end of 2011, with perhaps twice as many WiMax users. And Adlane Fellah, an analyst at telecommunications research firm Maravedis Inc., even speculated that carriers who intend to deploy LTE in a few years might turn to WiMax in the short term to take pressure off their 3G networks.

Although LTE is lagging behind WiMax today and will likely do so for the next few years, it's far from certain that WiMax will win this fight in the long run. "To LTE's credit, WiMax's head start has lessened, and LTE has the support of most major mobile operators," said Daryl Schoolar, principal analyst for wireless infrastructure at research firm Current Analysis, in an email exchange.