Alltel commits to LTE, adds 1M customers in Q1

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Humberto Saabedra @ May 15th 2008 5:47PM

I'm still surprised people are actually expecting LTE to go anywhere. When DoCoMo can't get past the second phase of trials after almost two years of testing, I don't hold out much hope for it to go anywhere past press releases and lab tests.

For a standard that was essentially thought of as a hack to W-CDMA in order to remain on par with WiBro/WiMax, people are sure betting on an unratified and unproven set of currently incompatible standards that still require custom chipset designs and heaps of spectrum to operate, just like W-CDMA.

I also don't understand how AT&T can say "we will launch LTE in 2010" when there's no equipment manufacturers lined up, no municipal planning, and no contractors outside working on cellsites at the moment.

At least Alltel was smart enough to give a realistic timeframe for its deployment, even though it was obvious they would go LTE because of the roaming coverage afforded to them by Verizon and AT&T (if it ever does get off the ground).

Of course, if its anything like WiMax (which it is, just with a different name) expect LTE to have the same issues as any high-speed wireless network, namely the lack of reliable and plentiful backhaul in order to provide the speeds that are being promised.

This is why Sprint and Clearwire merged WiMax assets and got outside investment from cable companies, search engines, chipset manufacturers, and equipment manufacturers. I have yet to see that level of commitment from anyone in the LSTI working group.

I'd be shocked if AT&T manages to hit the 20Mbps downlink they're expecting to next year on the 3G end since they're known for being short on capacity for 3G access, especially in urban areas such as Dallas Fort Worth.

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