LTE vs. WiMAX - A Contest or Not?

Sounds like the old DSL vs Cablemodem contest and we know how that turned out. Clearwire says it's not married to WiMAX for 4G, would be easy to switch. Save possibly for Sprint, no one's pushing WiMAX harder in the US than Clearwire -- but the commitment doesn't run as deep as you might think. Investing billions in a 4G network that goes brashly against the popular LTE grain is a huge gamble since Clearwire and its partners won't be able to throw as much weight around with manufacturers or achieve the same economies of scale that LTE carriers will, but these guys were smart. A move to LTE would be a simple software upgrade for much of its equipment, meaning Clearwire could almost literally change technologies overnight and with minimum expense. For the full article

LTE vs WiMAX: A Little 4G Sibling Rivalry

The level of openness of the 802.16m standard means WiMax equipment is standard and therefore cheaper to buy — sometimes half the cost of LTE and sometimes even less. Depending on the spectrum alloted for WiMax deployments and how the network is configured, this can mean a WiMax network is cheaper to build.