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The awkwardly named Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology is pulling ahead in the race for the 4G wireless networks. If carrier plans are any indication, Ultra Mobile Broadband, the upgrade technology for CDMA networks, is quickly becoming a non-factor. Even WiMAX, which was at one point seen as offering significant cost and time advantages, has started to lose out to LTE.

Since so many industry insiders have started talking about the inevitability of LTE over everything else, I have started to keep tabs on different carriers and their 4G plans. Here are some notables that have made their LTE plans public.

• Vodafone, the largest global carrier, has been an early champion of LTE.
• AT&T plans to roll out its 4G network sometime in 2012 utilizing their recently acquired 700 MHz spectrum.
• Verizon Wireless has plans to roll out its 700 MHz-based network in 2010.
• Japanese carrier KDDI, which has been using CDMA technologies for a while now, is said to be favoring LTE over UMB.

This is not a complete list so much as a directional indicator. (If you have any carriers you want to see on this list, please send me an email.) China and India, the big gorillas on Planet Mobile, have yet to decide their 3G/4G destiny and so remain an X-factor. (More on India down below.)

As more carriers opt for LTE, the equipment makers can start planning for scale and thus bring down the cap-ex costs for these carriers. Lower pricing can have a domino effect, so we could see smaller carriers start to opt for LTE as well. Companies on the equipment side are already making LTE plans.

At the CTIA show in Las Vegas, which wrapped up last week, there were a couple of significant announcements:

• Chinese equipment maker Huawei Technologies said it will have its 700 MHz products ready for launch in the first quarter of 2009, around the time the carriers can start claiming the wireless spectrum they bought. These offerings include UMTS, CDMA and LTE devices.
• Ericsson, which is now a dominant wireless infrastructure equipment provider, announced its 700 MHz plans with its new M700 mobile platform, an LTE-capable platform with peak data rates of up to 100Mbps in the downlink and up to 50Mbps in the uplink.

Again, this is not a complete list. (If you want us to include you in future 700 MHz/LTE posts, please drop us a link or short informational blurb via our contact form.)

Our favorite wireless data analyst, Chetan Sharma, did the rounds at CTIA and his conclusion about LTE concurred with our reporting. “Without a doubt the operator community is rallying behind LTE, and there might be an opportunity to finally converge to a single standard,” he says.

Sharma points out that single standards, while nice and dandy, will soon become a thing of the past thanks to “advances in silicon” that now make it possible “to integrate multiple radios” on single chip. Of course, the potential of software-defined radios are finally beginning to be realized as well; Huawei, for example, will be using SDRs in its 700 MHz gear.

So what about WiMAX? Well in the U.S., things aren’t looking so good. Sprint’s Xohm Network has hit some snags and Clearwire is riding rough seas. A rescue in the form of a new, megabillion-dollar funding for a new WiMAX operator might emerge, but we’ll have to wait and see.

As Sharma notes, “WiMAX has forced acceleration of the LTE standardization process but is starting to lose its time (and cost) advantage.” From what I have been able to learn, WiMAX is the technology of choice in the emerging telecom economies. In India for instance, Tata and Reliance, two giant telecom operators, are spending a ton of cash on WiMAX, as is the incumbent Indian incumbent, BSNL.

Charlie Martin, CTO of wireless for Huawei, in an interview with Fierce Broadband Wireless, said, “We view WiMAX as different from CDMA and LTE in terms of the fact that WiMAX is a good alternative for emerging markets and alternative operators.” If there is one company that knows emerging markets, it is Huawei, so I give Martin’s comments a lot of credence.

Note: I am starting to keep close tabs on all mobile web/wireless broadband developments and will be keeping you posted in coming weeks and months. I am looking to come up with a matrix of winners and losers - from chipmakers to device makers to carriers — from all these new wireless evolutions. If you want to help me with that, drop me a note with your thoughts and suggestions. Or send me your email address so I can add you to an ever-changing collaboration using Google Docs.

Interested in web infrastructure? Want to learn more about Green Data Centers? Check out our upcoming conference, Structure 08.

Cynthia Brumfield is a long-time communications, broadband and media analyst at Emerging Media Dynamics, and a blogger at IP Democracy.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson triggered a mini-free fall in the shares of phone companies last week when he told investors at a Citibank conference that non-pay disconnects are “happening all across consumer products lines,” with the possible exception of wireless voice accounts. In other words, a larger-than-expected chunk of customers aren’t paying their bills. And AT&T is pulling the plug on them.

This bit of concrete evidence that a recession is indeed underway spooked an already jittery stock market, dragging down non-telecommunications shares in the process. Hardest hit, though, were the leading telecom and cable companies, which managed to recovered slightly but continue to labor under a cloud of investor suspicion.

Comcast CFO Michael J. Angelakis echoed Stephenson’s claim. Speaking at the same Citibank conference, Angelakis said that during the second half of 2007 “we clearly saw bad debts increase, and we clearly saw a pickup in churn.” Translation: A growing number of cable customers aren’t paying their bills, either.

Against this backdrop, earnings season is about to get underway, meaning we’ll soon get a look at some hard fourth-quarter 2007 numbers from the top telecom and cable companies. If Stephenson and Angelakis are any indication, we’re in for disappointing results from the country’s top broadband, voice and video providers.

But a recession-driven slowdown for either cable or phone companies would be a new thing. Historically, cable has prided itself on being recession-proof. During the recession of the early 1990s and the downturn in 2001 and 2002, cable companies didn’t lose customers. In fact, in 2001 and 2002, cable was in the midst of digital TV and high-speed Internet rollouts, which cranked up growth (although the telecom and dot.com meltdowns, not to mention the accounting scandal that brought down WorldCom, made cable seem like it, too, was in the doldrums).

Phone companies have also held up well during economic downturns. Even though the big incumbent companies that now make up AT&T, Verizon and Qwest started losing access lines in 2000, those losses were mostly restricted to the commercial sector and were due to the rapid late-90s rise of competitive local exchange carriers. Consumer spending cutbacks typical of a recession didn’t come into play.

Things could be different this time around, because unlike in the past, cable and phone companies now sell a lot of services that consumers feel are discretionary. During past downturns, customers clung to their voice and pay-TV services because the telephone was considered essential and subscription TV was a bargain service, relative to other entertainment options.

However, that held true before the days of triple-play or quadruple-play bundles, before multiple digital service tiers and HD packages came along and before broadband either existed or was widely adopted. The thing to watch out for now is the possibility that the proverbial bundles of voice, video and data services might unravel.

For example, homes that buy both mobile and landline voice services could feel free to simply cut off the wired voice connection. During his Citibank talk, Stephenson cited this cost-savings measure as one cause of what will in all likelihood be stepped-up line losses for the company in the fourth quarter. Not that wireless substitution hasn’t been going on for a while, but tight household budgets could no doubt accelerate this trend.

Contrary to what I would normally expect, broadband service might turn out be a dispensable expense during a recession. “It’s non-pay disconnect that is driving the disconnect on access lines and on broadband as well,” Stephenson said during his Citigroup talk, reiterating several times that residential broadband growth has suffered some kind of a setback.

Cable companies, which posted very disappointing growth rates across the service board for the third quarter of ‘07 — before the economic slowdown truly took hold — have already started drawing up lower-cost service options and are about to market “double-play” packages of voice and high-speed services.

So what will we hear from cable operators and phone companies in the upcoming quarterly reporting season? Comcast officially confirmed back in December that it won’t make its fiscal 2007 guidance, citing weaker-than-expected subscriber gains. Based on the sounds Stephenson made, AT&T is managing expectations in advance of a weak fourth-quarter report as well.

Most of the other cable and phone companies will probably not have much better news, with the possible exception of Verizon, whose CFO, Denny Strigl, told the same Citigroup investors that the weak economy had “minimal” impact on his company. Moreover, in contrast to its peers, Verizon issued relatively robust third-quarter numbers last fall.

But compared to a lot of other industries, and despite any short-term hit that cable and phone companies may take, the communications network business — be it cable, telco or wireless — is a relatively sure bet in the long term. Both AT&T’s Stephenson and Comcast’s Angelakis, while acknowledging the challenges of increased competition and a weak economy, stressed this fact. “We are in the middle of a growth industry,” Stephenson said.

Recently, a brouhaha has broken out over Comcast (CMCSA), the second-largest U.S. broadband provider, and its policies regarding the management of peer-to-peer traffic. The company contests that it doesn’t block traffic to P2P services, web sites and other applications, but rather that it tries to “manage” traffic in times of congestion on various parts of its network where clogging is most acute. Semantics?

From what I understand, the company delays the P2P packets in order to decongest the network, but P2P applications by nature are set to autodial and try again. Is this an infinite delay or just a temporary management issue? Regardless of what you might think about Comcast and its policies, the issue is not limited to the Philadelphia-based broadband and TV services company.

Comcast, according to published reports, has been using network management tools from a Canadian company called Sandvine, which is publicly traded on both the London Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange. And if you dig through the documentation on Sandvine’s web site, it becomes pretty clear that there are other carriers out there indulging in traffic shaping and management.

Carphone Warehouse, a UK-based service provider well-known for its broken promises over free broadband, is listed as a customer of Sandvine. In a recent investor presentation, Sandvine said it had 51 cable and 38 DSL providers as customers as of the end of the third quarter, including, it bragged, 13 of the Top 100 service providers. Nearly 89 percent of its revenue came from North America.

If you correlate these facts, you know there are other big North American companies using their gear as well. In another publicly available document, Sandvine claims that “eight of the Top 20 broadband service providers in the U.S. are Sandvine customers.” Now while Sandvine has a whole slew of products, the company’s real value proposition is helping carriers make money and better manage their networks.

Growth in network traffic continues to stress network capacity due largely to the mass market popularity of bandwidth-hungry applications, such as file-sharing and streaming video from popular sites like YouTube…By accurately identifying various “conditions” that are occurring on its network, a broadband service provider can then apply “actions” (i.e. policies) based on those conditions to pursue the broadband management objectives sought by that service provider.

Sandvine doesn’t identify its customers; it refers to them as Company A, B, C or whatever, but never by name. I guess that’s because this is potentially sensitive information and a potential PR disaster. I have left a message for their PR spokesperson, but so far no response. I am also checking with some of the major broadband providers. An AT&T (T) spokesperson emailed with this:

AT&T does not treat P2P traffic any differently than other Internet traffic. And, we are not a customer of Sandvine. Beyond that, we do not comment on vendor relationships outside of product announcements.

We will update the story as we hear from others, but one thing is becoming quite clear — this won’t be the last time you’ll hear the phrase “traffic shaping.”

Update: A spokesperson for Cox Communications’ high-speed Internet division said, via email:

As with any ISP, Cox uses a variety of tools to make sure all our customers have the best possible customer experience with our high-speed Internet service. However, to protect the integrity and security of our network, we don’t disclose specific methods or vendors used.

Written by by Jesse Kopelman

Lost amid all the speculation about Google’s (GOOG) involvement in the forthcoming 700 MHz auction and whether or not the search giant would manage to impose its will on an incumbent-loving Federal Communications Commission was a decision by the agency that may prove to be the most significant one it’s made over the past 10 years.

The FCC on July 31 issued a statement in which it noted that the 700 MHz C Block spectrum winner would be required to have open-device access on their network. This Carterfone for wireless was one of the things Google had asked for and was, depending on your viewpoint, either a small victory for the company or a meaningless token meant to impress the unwashed masses but do nothing to change the status quo.

Far more interesting, however, was the FCC’s revelation that the 700 MHz public safety band was being rechannelized to support broadband and that the 700 MHz D Block license would be devoted to a national public/private partnership to deliver both public safety and commercial broadband.

This decision to enable a public/private wireless broadband partnership is extremely important because it represents the best hope yet for both a modern public safety wireless network and offers a realistic solution to the digital divide.

On Aug.10, the FCC issued a 312-page report in which it laid out rules governing wireless licenses in the 700 MHz spectrum. In short, the winner of the D Block will have to enter into a deal with the Department of Homeland Security to determine how both the D Block and the broadband portion of the public safety spectrum will be administered. The winner gets the only franchise (with one exciting exception) to build and maintain networks using the combined spectrum. The D Block and broadband public safety spectrum are adjacent 10 MHz (5 X 5 MHz) bands that can be operated as a single 20 MHz (10 X 10 MHz) allocation. This spectrum has some very important build-out criteria. While public safety users are only primary in half of it, they must be able to preempt commercial users (at the decree of Homeland Security) over both bands. The D Block itself must be 75 percent (by covered population) built-out in four years, 95 percent in seven years, and 99.3 percent in 10 years. Most commercial licenses, by comparison, only have to be 25 percent or 33 percent built-out in five years.

The exciting exception to the D Block winners franchise is that local public safety agencies can preemptively build-out their networks if they don’t like where they sit in the license winner’s schedule (I have personally dealt with several municipalities that would have loved to do this with the 2.6 GHz spectrum owned by Sprint (FON) and Clearwire).

So, what’s the big deal? Well, the idea that’s been floating around for years (long before 9/11) — that of building out a dedicated national first responder network — is never going to happen. It’s just so inefficient. Ten billion dollars in capital costs, plus relying on some yet-to-be-created arm of the bureaucracy for operations and maintenance, would be a hard pill to swallow come appropriations time. The multiuse network idea being presented here, on the other hand, is a huge win all around. Not only is there now a tenfold increase in potential user base through which to recoup costs, but thanks to the need for ubiquitous public safety coverage, there will finally be a wireless network with better than laughable coverage in rural areas.

In the meantime, access to a reasonable amount of spectrum-building penetrating 700 MHz frequencies, national network economies of scale, and public safety anchor tenants all combine to form a business case that might actually support low-cost Internet access and bridge the digital divide. And even if nobody actually builds their own network, at least a little more leverage gets put back on the side of the customer — where it belongs.

Of course, all my excitement might be for nothing. There are some serious hurdles to overcome here. Even though the FCC is pricing the minimum bid for D Block at a mere $1.33 billion (about a third of what they consider market value for access to 20 MHz of spectrum), it will cost at least another $5 billion to get that 75 percent build-out in four years. Spending $6 billion over the course of four years is not for dilettantes, and if the incumbents get a hold of this spectrum it might be more in their interest to try and break even on the public safety stuff rather than risk the profit margins of their existing broadband networks (at least they will have prevented the formation of new competition, and that is certainly worth $1.33 billion to the likes of AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ)).

Perhaps the bigger hurdle is having to negotiate all of the technology and deployment decisions with the Department of Homeland Security. By the time everything is agreed to, budgets and deadlines will be blown and the network itself runs a good risk of being obsolete before it is ever deployed. The license winner will have to be well-versed in dealing with government contracts, and that, sadly, once again points to an incumbent or, worse yet, Halliburton Wireless (Dick Cheney will need a new job by the time this network launches).

Whether the FCC’s move results in a progressive, multiuse network or just another half-measure by some incumbent, I applaud the agency for making a decision that at least carries some rational expectation of positive results. This idea of trading upfront cash for stringent build-out requirements with an eye to the public good is huge break from the past 15 or so years of spectrum policy. It is also a change wholly for the better. Going forward, this is exactly what we need from the FCC.