The first delay
However, Verizon - which made a splash in Barcelona by explaining its game plan for LTE, complete with a list of supply contract winners - has already dropped the first bomb on LTE's ambitious timeline. The US carrier originally planned to have its first commercial LTE services up and running in 20 to 30 markets the first half of 2010, and nationwide coverage (in the cities, at least) by the end of 2013. But in a conference call in mid-May, wireless chief Lowell McAdam said the commercial launches would be pushed back at least six months to the second half of next year, with national coverage now scheduled to be completed in 2015 - two years later than originally stated.
McAdam chalked the delay up to a decision to go slow on LTE and "see what we need to do so we don't get ahead of ourselves in putting in capacity that we don't need."
But Verizon may also be taking a page from 3G's own chequered history, observes Caroline Gabriel, head of research at Rethink Research.
"This may not be the last revision of Verizon's timescales, and the story is a familiar one from the days of the European 3G bubble," Gabriel said in a research note. "Launching prematurely with ill-tested equipment and a shortage of devices would be worse than delaying roll-out."
And a device shortage is a real possibility. Qualcomm - which supplies most of the chipsets that end up in Verizon products - plans to have chips for LTE datacards generally available next year, by which time handset chips will only be available for sampling. With device product cycles typically lasting 18 months - and with Verizon's well-known policy of rigorous device testing to meet its high standards of quality - Verizon's LTE offering will have to get by on dongles or single-mode gadgets until the end of 2011, Gabriel says.
Device strategies
To be fair, Wimax has been dealing with the same issue. Wimax networks today ship mostly with either CPE for fixed-wireless offerings, or dongles, although a few laptops with embedded Wimax have also appeared in select markets. Dongles are a good entry-level approach to get consumers using the service, but Wimax proponents - as well as the GSMA, for that matter - believe that wireless broadband's success hinges on embedding it into more devices, starting with laptops and netbooks, but moving on to all kinds of consumer electronics devices like cameras, MP3 players and gaming consoles.
The problem, says Peter Cannistra, VP of market development at Clearwire, is that while CE manufacturers "buy the Wimax story", they're still hesitant to add to their BOM when they're already running on razor-thin margins and Wimax's business model is still a work in progress.
"Wimax players need to work harder to make Wimax compelling enough for the CE manufacturers to go forward," Cannistra says.
The need for multiple embedded Wimax devices isn't just about providing the variety of choice that drives 3G services today - it's also the key to competing against HSPA/EV-DO services now, and LTE in the future, according to Takashi Tanaka, president of Japan's UQ Communications.
In his Wimax Forum Asia keynote in April, Tanaka said that Japanese mobile users are generally unhappy with handsets as a mobile Internet device. "Most mobile users in Japan use mobile Internet [HSPA and EV-DO], but complain regularly about speed, the limited browser, limited content, small screen and small keyboard," he said. "Wimax can meet those needs, so why not deploy it?"
More to the point, however, users in Japan have lots of gadgets that they want to connect to the Internet, but mobile operators have difficulty with this because traditionally, a mobile service contract is tied to just one device. Consequently, UQ intends to offer multi-device mobile deals, where a flat-rate monthly fee allows a subscriber to connect, say, a laptop/netbook/dongle, an MP3 player and a gaming device.