T-Mobile exec downplays need for LTE, calls WiMAX 'niche'

LTE? WiMAX? T-Mobile USA's Neville Ray isn't as interested in these technologies as the competition. In an interview with BusinessWeek, the Chief Network Officer said, "we'll look towards LTE at the right point in time for us... that ecosystem is going to be much richer than the competing one from [WiMAX], which is really a niche play." A niche play, you say? Network burn! What isn't clear from the BW piece -- and it's something we're painfully curious about -- is if Ray himself used the term 4G as interchangeably as the article implies. After all, the company line is that it's already got a 4G technology in (the theoretically slower) HSPA+, as it's claimed as recently as the G2 announcement. We're guessing not, but all the same, we wouldn't hold our breath for any radical new cell towers in T-Mo's immediate future -- and we'd expect nothing less from AT&T than to continue to sneer at its use of the 4G term in its press materials.