Vodafone CEO urges industry to rally around LTE

by Darren Murph, posted Apr 3rd 2008 at 8:47AM

Late last year, we were still wondering whether LTE even had the backing to keep up with WiMAX. Fast forward to CTIA 2008, and my, how the tables have turned. Vodafone, which already teamed up with Verizon in order to initiate an LTE trial in 2008, urged the rest of the wireless sector to put its support squarely behind Long Term Evolution. Vodafone Group's CEO, Arun Sarin, suggested that we could all see mobile internet speeds more similar to those enjoyed on the PC today if the industry "rallied around one broadband standard," specifically noting that "we need to look at LTE as an all-encompassing standard." The push comes hot on the heels of Sprint's unfortunate delay of its XOHM WiMAX network, but it should be noted that infrastructure vendors in attendance tended to feel that the two would coexist at least in the short term. Sheesh, let's just forget this whole LTE / WiMAX spat and place our bets on TD-SCDMA.