According to panelists at Interop, WiMAX and LTE, the two main versions of the next-generation 4G networks will be able to co-exist in the same consumer electronics products – there will be no hand-joining, yet they will be living next to each other. The deployment of laptops and other consumer devices that feature 4G access is on its way to become reality, and some 4G experts stated at the Interop conference yesterday that some vendors would include both WiMAX and LTE support within the same machines.

The giant chip manufacturer Intel already provided laptop makers with devices supporting both flavors of 4G networks, stated some members of a 4G panel held yesterday in New York City. According to Sten Andersson, Ericsson's VP of wireless strategy for North America, his company also came up with chips supporting dual 4G which can be used on a wide spectrum of devices.

Laptops and phones will not be the only consumer electronics to benefit from the advantages brought by the 4G support. It will also be available for digital cameras, camcorders, smartphones, and just about every other type of consumer device, said the specialists.

Besides LTE, the 4G technology embraced by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, and WiMAX, an alternative 4G promoted and deployed by Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, and NextWave, among others, future devices will also feature Wi-Fi support. The 4G technology is now able to provide speeds of more than 3 Mbps on the downlink and 1 Mbps on the uplink.

Ramesh Kumar, worldwide marketing director in TI's Communications Infrastructure Business Unit, DSP Systems, said that companies were testing both WiMAX and LTE, and in order to do this, they needed special chips designed to support both technology standards with a simple swap of software.

Some thought of having WiMAX and LTE converging at the standard level, yet it remains only a hypothesis at the moment. It seems that Vodafone came up with an idea in this direction, although it didn’t go too far with it. "There's no momentum behind it," said Ashish Sharma, VP of corporate market development for Alvarion.