Will LTE become the ‘Red Headed Stepchild’ for the Telco’s?

There is a lot of talk these days about Telco’s deploying LTE, etc, etc…. Let’s ignore the fact that LTE remains ‘Vaporware’ today, (all talk, and no product in sight, not even an IEEE standard in sight).

So, if and when it does get here, then how will the proponents of LTE position it? LTE, and WiMAX for that matter, are both packet technologies. WiMAX is super fast, open, no walled garden, etc, just the internet we know and love, but mobile. LTE is being positioned as essentially the same as WiMAX.

Gosh, I can’t help but wonder about the effect of positioning LTE beside DSL, or LTE beside traditional semi-walled garden 3G services. Looks to me like the incumbents have a cannibalization problem on their hands. No surprise, since WiMAX and LTE are both disruptive.

Simply cloning WiMAX and renaming it LTE does not change the fact that it is a highly disruptive technology. I have not seen business models from the Telco’s that take WiMAX/LTE into consideration. For the Telco’s, whether they deploy WiMAX, or WiMAX by a different name (LTE), the incumbents still face the same problem: DSL, Home Phone, & Cellular service, are in for a serious shake up. What do you think?