ITU debating which tech to adopt as 4G

Rating: six way fight

Wow. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has received no fewer than six candidates for providing the next generation of mobile networks which is commonly referred to as 4G. The ITU calls it IMT-Advanced.

This situation is very reminiscent of the fight which took place over 3G where, effectively, three different versions of 3G were established: - W-CDMA; CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA.

Although the ITU says it is following the 3GPP’s LTE Release 10 (LTE-Advanced) technology and the IEEE’s 802.16m technology, it is still debating which of the proposals should be actually adopted.

The ITU effectively acknowledges that three are plenty of vested interests involved since it describes the candidates come from ’stakeholders’. The list includes equipment manufacturers, technology developers, network operators and service providers, market and user organiaations, universities, research institutions and national administrations.

The good news, of course, is that China (which backed TD-SCDMA) isn’t out on a limb this time and has been heavily involved in LTE (Long Term Evolution) with the likes of Vodafone and AT&T.