We are in a world that needs internet to survive. Without the use of the internet, a lot of business would just crumble down and a lot of people would be desperate just for a little bit of their daily dosage of social media or any other thing they use the internet for. But when it comes to 4G technology, it’s time for people to make a decision between two of the main providers: WiMAX and LTE.
Are They Similar?
Before going into the actual differences, we can see that there are similarities between both of these service providers. To start it off, they are both IP technologies, and they both support advanced multiple input and multiple output antenna technology (MIMO). So as we can see, they aren’t all that different.
Bandwidth Channels
Or are they? If we decided to look into the differences between them we can see that LTE uses different bandwidth channels that range from 1.4 MHz to 100 MHz. As opposed, WiMAX uses bandwidth channels of only up to 40 MHz, which as you can see will make an notable difference. On top of that, LTE uses different modulations for uplink and downlink, as opposed to WiMAX which has the same modulation for them both.
Speeds
Plus, if you’re going to do things fast (and possibly break them), you are also going to be using LTE rather than WiMAX because at the top speeds that these can handle are very different from one another. While LTE can handle speeds of up to 450 km per hour (280 miles per hour), WiMAX can only handle speeds of 120 km per hour (75 miles per hour).
Network Roaming
While the LTE network enables the coexistence with systems like 2G and 3G, as well as roaming between these systems, the WiMAX network doesn’t support these other systems and doesn’t allow roaming nor the coexistence between them. But then again, the costs for building a WiMAX network are lower than the costs of building a LTE network.
As we can see, LTE is compatible with a lot more technologies from the old days (this is important because, unfortunately, we can’t just get something whenever it comes out – we’re not rich) and on top of that, it enables a lot greater speed for mobile users. These are all significant advantages and if you can afford LTE you should always choose it over WiMAX since the advantages speak for themselves.
Of course, if you are going for 4G on a lower price, than the obvious choice you are going to take is WiMAX, but you will need to remember that you are doing it just to save a little bit of money. While doing so, you are however going to lose quality on the service provided.