Mobile phone technology is in a fast forward mode. Continuous process of innovations made the all pervasive mobile phone to spread its coverage to all nooks and corners of this vast universe. It is well known that the use of mobile phones is so widespread and it has become an unavoidable device for every one irrespective of their occupation or status. It has redefined the concept of telephony in the 21st century. Ever since it was invented and introduced for public consumption, mobile phone technology has been undergoing continuous process of evolution. As a result of this innovative upsurge, newer features got incorporated in the device periodically.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is one among many projects that caused substantial changes in the mobile technology. It is within the frame work of 3rd generation (3G) cellular service. The role out of 3G by the mobile network operators is expected to deliver bouquet of value added services. It will extend capabilities for higher speed data transfer and advanced video streaming. The LTE will contribute towards improving the universal mobile telecommunication standards, as well as spectral efficiency, lowering costs and enabling integration with other open standards. The project is known as 3GPP LTE.

In UK the first 3rd generation partnership project or 3GPP was introduced by Samsung whose model Kalima supports download speed up to 100Mbps and upload speed of 50Mbps within 20 MHz frequency bandwidth. The users will be able to download high definition movie files (800MB) in one minute at a speed of 100Mbps. This LTE modem is compatible with earlier standards. Samsung has also developed another modem named Broom which has capacity to download at 28Mbps and upload at 11.5 Mbps. These modems are based on the release of 7 standards with HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) evolution platform.

Nokia Siemens Network also has developed LTE mobile, claiming that it is worlds first call using next generation technology. They are expected to introduce it shortly. The prospects are brighter for the telecom industry. The new technology will render faster capability to the mobile phones and will enable faster uploads and downloads of movies, music and other data. The users will be able to download mobile broadband as faster as a computer having wired broadband connection.

Many other players in the telecommunication segment are expected to adopt LTE in their mobile phones. As LTE is the most advanced 3rd generation wireless technology and there is widespread expectation that it will be the spring board for the 4th generation standards for mobile telephony it is quite natural that more industry leaders will follow suit. Major players like Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and NEC are now adopting LTE for their future plans. Experts are of the opinion that the adoption of LTE will become imperative in order to survive in the market. Ultimately the consumer will be benefited by the reliable and fast services.

The consumers can avail all information about innovative ideas that are being incorporated in this from the exclusive websites devoted to mobile phone technology. Product reviews periodically appearing in these websites are helpful for prospective buyers to choose the right products.

The race between LTE and WiMax, intriguing before the economy crashed, now is even more interesting. The basic scenario is that WiMax is already is in commercial deployment – with Clearwire’s Clear service and others – while LTE is rushing into production and has had commitments from powerhouse networks such as AT&T and Verizon. The bad financial landscape makes every move even more critical. The margin of error — never great for an expensive new technology – is even smaller during trying times.

That’s why every piece of news, good or bad, is important. What is being announced is important in its own right – and also can push the momentum toward or away from the technology. The latest news is significant – and not very good for LTE. GigaOm reports on word from Deutsche Bank that Qualcomm chipsets for data cards will be delayed until the second half of 2010 and for handsets until “well into” the next year. The story goes into detail, but the bottom line is that this will play havoc with the launch. Simply, the development of a high-speed network is rendered a moot point if few people have the technology in their mobile devices to take advantage of it.

In some instances, it is important to read between the lines. A recent blog posting reports upon comments made by Michael Mamaghani, Qualcomm’s director of marketing, at the Globalpress Summit Conference last week in San Francisco. Mamaghani said all the right good things about LTE, which his company is backing. He also said all the right dismissive things about WiMax, which it is not. The subtleties involved how he addressed the timeframe for LTE. He first described the gap between the finalization of the 3G standard and what he considers mass commercialization. He then used that time period to predict that LTE won’t hit the masses in a big way until the 2012 to 2014 timeframe. The underlying message is that the timing of the network rollout is not completely up to the carrier. The attitude and opinion of vendors – some of which may have significantly different agendas and priorities – is a significant consideration.

The introduction of gear that uses a new networking protocol is a gradual process. More accurately, it is a set of gradual processes. The chips may be integrated into bigger devices – laptops instead of phones, for instance – first. For various reasons, there generally are pre-production versions of phones that house the LTE functionality separately. These units will be bulky and eat batteries alive and thus aren’t intended for wide deployment. A third issue is the preparation of the various technical and business infrastructure elements beyond the core technology necessary to support large scale commercial numbers. The key is gating all of these fluid evolutionary cycles against the key element: Customer demand. Some of these issues are discussed at Unstrung. The bottom line is that Verizon pronouncements that LTE will be available in a certain amount of markets by a certain date is tentative and clearly open to delay.

A very interesting WirelessWeek piece talks a bit more generally about the transition from one platform to the next. There seems to be good news and challenges. The good news is that “it seems the industry has learned a few lessons.” It is likely to start with larger scale integrations and, in general, avoid some of the missteps of the past. Thus, for instance, it may first deploy the chips in dongles instead of immediately putting the technology into cell phones. On the other side of the coin, there simply are more protocols to be integrated as the industry ages. The bottom line is that there still is a lot of detail-oriented work to be done.

Real rollouts are worlds away from press release fantasy lands. It remains to be seen whether the delays materialize, dissipate or get worse. What is certain is that Verizon Wireless was pushing for earlier deployments than once thought likely, and was trying to build excitement. From that perspective, any delays will not be helpful.

The next year or so will be very interesting. On one hand, the battle for the future of 4G between LTE and WiMax will be fully joined. However, both are IP-based and use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and, experts say, are relatively close on the telecommunications family tree. Indeed, the biggest difference may concern the other IP: intellectual property. Despite the maneuvering today, it is possible that in a few years the two will blend together.

This doesn’t mean that tough decisions aren’t being made in the near future, however. LTE has had a good run of it lately, and that streak seems set to continue. The Daily Yomiuri Online reports that LTE may be on the verge of a big win in Japan. There, the largest and third-largest carriers – NTT DoCoMo and SoftBank Mobile, respectively – are planning to replace Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) with LTE. The carrier they sandwich, KDDI, may be on the verge of deploying the same network. Experts say that such a move would lead to more expansive features and deeper price competition, since subscribers would be more easily able to move between service providers.

In the long run, it seems that the worlds of LTE and WiMax may coalesce. Vendors – whose survival involves a keen instinct on which way the wind blows – see the possibility. Not missing a beat, Motorola used this week’s CTIA Wireless 2008 show in Las Vegas to make WiMax and LTE announcements. Among other things, the company is developing equipment that can be used for both platforms. Nortel, in the press release outlining its activities at CTIA, gave about equal billing to LTE and WiMax.

The theme of parallel evolutions comes up in a recent entertaining feature in The Hindi (quotes from Rudyard Kipling poems are rare in the technical press). The writer maps the evolution of LTE in some detail. He concludes that Ericsson, Alcatel and “dozens of handset makers and back haul providers” are researching both LTE and WiMax since the direction of the market is impossible to determine.

Telecommunications Online ends this feature on a similar note. The bulk of the story handicaps the race between the two platforms. WiMax clearly is ahead, but LTE is making some impressive recent gains. It is not certain that the first platform available will necessarily prevail. The last section of the story details efforts to create a converged 4G standard. The writer says that “there appears to be no insurmountable barrier to making a unified standard happen.” A Motorola executive estimates that the standards use 75 percent to 80 percent of the same technology.

Of course, corporate planners need to follow these events closely. They should rest easy, however, in the knowledge that no reputable company will introduce LTE or WiMax gear that doesn’t have a migration path to a converged standard.