That’s a hell of a headline, shamelessly loaded with industry jargon, so let’s put this story together piece by piece. Clearwire is a mobile broadband vendor in the United States that uses WiMAX technology. They have a little under 700,000 users as of Q4 2009, and that includes users who signed up via 3rd party resellers such as Sprint, who by the way owns a majority stake in Clearwire. WiMAX is a standard that was set by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and was meant to be a replacement for cable and DSL modems. According to Clearwire, WiMAX should give users between 3 to 6 megabit per second access, with bursts of around 10 megabits per second. Many people wondered why Clearwire chose WiMAX instead of LTE, which the entire world will eventually use to offer mobile broadband speed in the 30 to 50 megabit per second range. Both Verizon and AT&T have committed to using LTE.
LTE is a standard maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), which is building upon the work done with GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). LTE is the next logical step after HSPA, the current flavor most 3G networks currently operate on.
Clearwire recently asked the 3GPP to set standards for TD-LTE to be operable on the 2.6 GHz band, currently TD-LTE is only working on the 2.3 GHz band. Clearwire owns spectrum in the 2.5-2.6 GHz bands so this may be a sign that they’re preparing to make the switch to TD-LTE. Now what is TD-LTE? It’s the Chinese standard for LTE, as in not compatible with the rest of the world. Everyone else is using FDD-LTE, which means that operators have two channels in use, one for downloading, one for uploading. TD-LTE uses the same channel for both uploading, and downloading, and gives priority to whichever one needs more resources at any given moment. The advantages of FDD-LTE are less interference, and more predictable/reliable network performance. The advantages of TD-LTE are … well hey, if there were any advantages then there would be people other than the Chinese using the technology.
The 3GPP said that they’ll start working on Clearwire’s request, and that by March 2011 the standard should be ready. Clearwire, by contract, can’t make the switch to another mobile broadband technology until November 2011. The contract in question is between Intel and Clearwire. Intel, one of the creators of WiMAX, would like to see the technology take off, but it’s failing to reach the success that WiFi did back during the early part of this century.
So there you have it. Clearwire started with a technology that made people go “ummm, you’re a jackass”, and now it looks like they’re transitioning to another technology that will make people go “man, you really are a freaking moron, you know that right?”
Brilliant.
[Via: LTE Watch, Fierce Wireless]