Vodafone CEO: WiMAX can be a part of LTE

Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin argued that WiMAX could find a place within the LTE standard during the opening keynote at the GSMA's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Interestingly, last year Sarin gave a keynote that urged the GSM community to push the LTE standard along since WiMAX was way ahead in its development. Sarin then admitted that LTE was far from being implemented, let alone standardized, and surprised the audience by suggesting that LTE may not even be supported by Vodafone in the future. This year, he believes WiMAX should be a part of LTE.

"I think LTE has made real improvements in the last twelve months, and I would say WiMAX has made some progress as well," Sarin admitted. "The issue for me is simply resources in our industry: We only have a finite number of R&D engineers and we split them into three camps, then we would be diluting what we can do in the future. LTE standard is an encompassing standard, an accommodating standard--and as I said a few moments ago--there is a TDD section that I think WiMAX could fit into." Try telling that to the WiMAX community.

To read more about Sarin's comments:
- check out this report [1] from FierceWireless

Related articles:
Why did Vodafone join the WiMAX Forum? Report [2]
Sprint still plugging along with WiMAX Report [3]