LTE = Windows Vista and HSPA = Windows XP

Moray Rumney in Forum Oxford made us aware that 3GPP has published a link on their homepage to address concerns with aspects of LTE deployment covering:

• Support for voice
• Supoort for SMS
• Readiness of IMS
• Support for emergency calling

Dean Bubley, a well known analyst provided the following response:

It takes a very narrow view that "maturity" equals "fully specified". It still maintains that "The voice solution for LTE is IMS VoIP and it is fully specified" and that any other solution is merely a "transition".

In other words, it makes LTE sound unsuitable for those operators which are IP-centric but which do not believe in IMS as a suitable control/service solution.

3GPP is trying to use LTE as a lever to force unwilling operators to adopt IMS. This will fail.

SMS-over-SGs has some serious shortcoming as well as costs, but is probably OK as a short term solution.

I am moving to the view that current LTE is the equivalent of Windows Vista, while HSPA = XP

I think a lot of operators will wait until "Windows 7" becomes available, either LTE Advanced or perhaps Rel 10 LTE.

Very interesting. He has put forward a great analogy of Windows OS that reflects concerns of many of us.

You can follow the complete discussions here.