Will regional carriers go with WiMAX or LTE?

Back in August, MetroPCS announced their intention to upgrade using LTE. CEO Roger Lindquist wants to make the move soon, though he did not elaborate on the company’s plans. Rival Leap Wireless hasn’t decided on a platform yet, and it doesn’t appear an announcement is imminent. US Cellular hasn’t officially made a decision, though by all appearances they’ll be going LTE as well. Why? Because they are a regional carrier, they depend on roaming agreements to give the best coverage to their customers. Since most of these agreements are with Verizon, VP Mark Steinkrauss notes that the company would most likely go the LTE route. He also mentioned the “opportunity for reasonable infrastructure costs and equipment costs.” As for MVNOs, well, they’re largely subject to what other carriers decide. Daniel Neal, CEO of kajeet, makes sense of the situation:

“It’s not like there’s a huge human cry among teens and tweens for 4G right now,” Neal said. “They do use what an American wireless user would call advanced services, but we just don’t hear a lot of requests. That’s going to take some time to evolve.”

You can replace “teens and tweeens” with “typical prepaid user.” While 4G services are nice, they’re anything but essential. A large portion of prepaid users are fine with functionality over luxury.]]>