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Operator ready to leap to LTE, says report
8:30 AM -- Japan's KDDI Corp. is seriously considering abandoning its CDMA2000 heritage and going with Long-Term Evolution (LTE) for its next-generation mobile broadband technology, according to a report in the Japanese newspaper Daily Yomiuri.
Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT)'s Fred Wright, senior vice president for cellular networks and WiMax, also thinks KDDI will adopt LTE.
If so, the Japanese operator would join fellow CDMA defector Verizon Wireless and make a cozy LTE club in the country as NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM) pushes the 4G technology to its limits before a scheduled commercial launched in 2010. (See Verizon Goes LTE and DoCoMo Takes LTE to 250 Mbit/s.)
KDDI is also well into a major national mobile WiMax network deployment. The operator recently named Fujitsu Ltd. (Tokyo: 6702; London: FUJ; OTC: FJTSY) and Samsung Corp. as the equipment vendors for its $1.3 billion mobile WiMax network. (See KDDI's WiMax Picks, KDDI Nears WiMax Vendor Picks, and KDDI Forms Mobile WiMax JV.)
If KDDI goes with LTE, the whole WiMax vs. LTE debate would be embodied in this one operator. Either this is a case of 4G schizophrenia or KDDI will show how the two technologies actually complement, rather than compete with, each other.
— Michelle Donegan, European Editor, Unstrung
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