WiMAX is here to stay, or so says Bruce Brda, senior vice president and general manager of the wireless networks business at Motorola. Brda gave a thoughtful keynote today at 4G World about what the LTE/WiMAX relationship will look like going forward.

Brda outlined three possible scenarios, including the death of WiMAX, convergence and competition. Not surprisingly, Burda came out on the competition side of things, predicting a long life ahead for WiMAX.

“WiMAX would have to stall out, and LTE would have to launch much faster than current models are predicting,” Brda said, addressing the idea that LTE could completely kill WiMAX. “From a consumer perspective, LTE would have to be compelling enough for existing WiMAX customers to switch to LTE,” he said, adding that he refutes that idea entirely. 

As far as the two technologies converging, Brda said they’re just too different for that to happen. He said that the differing standards organizations, WiMAX coming from IEEE and LTE from 3GPP, would make a convergence scenario highly unlikely.

Brda wasn’t shy about giving LTE its props. “LTE is an option, and it’s coming fast,” he said, adding that he believes carriers, both big and small, have chosen the path of least resistance when it comes to their network strategies. For the larger carriers, LTE was a natural evolution, and for small players, WiMAX offers a cost-effective solution that could be implemented now.

In closing, Brda noted that LTE stands to gain a lot from early WiMAX deployments. He said that the competition being presented in the form of WiMAX would only hasten the larger operator’s deployment of LTE.