VAS - inventions

HSPA/LTE vs WiMAX

Citation from Wireless Networks of the Future, partition "OPERATIONS / USABILITY"

When experts are trying to compare HSPA/LTE and WiMax, they have the following pro et contra:

· WiMax has less coverage per one radio node,

· WiMax has less access speed,

· WiMax has less variety of frequencies for usage,

· Finally, WiMax is came from IT world, not from Telecom World, and therefore it hasn’t support from mobile networks and terminals vendors, which leads slow mass production without benefits of the economy of scale.

Meantime there are another points to stress, caused by the correlation of LTE with 2G/3G networks. These are the following:

· WiMax has not same rich roaming capabilities as LTE has. It caused by the fact, that LTE (via 2G/3G networks) is interconnected through HLRs (or HSSes) are historically already interconnected on the World-Wide level.

· “Always Online” feature is more efficient to organize in LTE networks, as there is an opportunity to have short signaling messages over NGN infrastructure, that something have to be downloaded over high speed LTE network. WiMax hasn’t such slow secondary network and this leads to the following un-efficiency:

o Reduce overall WiMax network capacity and maximum speed, as all terminals have to be registered in local WiMax cell.

o Reduce battery charge in Mobile Terminals as WiMax electronics (transmitter, CPU and so on) consumes more power than similar of 2G/3G.

o Limited access area – where WiMax network ends, then no any service available. Meantime for LTE some basic service (with lower speed) can be seamlessly provided over HSPA or even 2G network of the operator.

· Unified common contact book – i.e. LTE subscriber have in one terminal opportunity to have access to any type contact like call to fixed PSTN number, call mobile, send SMS, access to e-mail, Instant Messaging and WEB accounts like blogs, chats, personal pages and so on. Meantime, WiMax subscriber has access (at least easy and cheap one) to packet network contact types only. Therefore generic communication channels like call phone number and send SMS are quite limited and local client software dependant abilities.

 

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