4G technology is on the way, and while most of us tech-heads are excited about the advent of the promised high speeds and new devices, there are some folks that aren't so sure about the timing of the release and the necessity of the rush.

One such skeptic is Andrew Seybold of fiercewireless.com, a site that focuses on everything wireless, from handsets to the latest 4G info. He offers some interesting arguments on the subject, considering whether perhaps carriers should instead be focusing on the advancement of 3G and if LTE will really be able to perform as advertised based on the spectrums on which it operates:

"We are hearing wonderful things about LTE, but the data rates and capacity increases being bandied about are theoretical and based on using 20 MHz of spectrum. One reason the WiMAX community can claim data speed and capacity gains over today's EV-DO Rev A and UMTS/HSPA is due to the amount of bandwidth it uses. EV-DO Rev A occupies only 1.25 MHz of spectrum per carrier and UMTS/HSPA occupies 5 MHz per carrier. The WiMAX community is basing its claims on bandwidths of 8 MHz or more. If you normalize these three technologies in 10 MHz of spectrum, you find they offer about the same data rates and capacity.

Not many network operators have 20 MHz of contiguous spectrum to use for LTE, but LTE can run in any amount of spectrum from 1.25 MHz up to 20 MHz so it will fit almost anywhere. The caveat is that when LTE is used in less than 20 MHz of spectrum, data speeds and capacity are lower than the published specifications and, in most cases, are about the same as the next revisions of UMTS/HSPA+ and EV-DO Rev B."

Andrew's essential point here is that it may be unlikely that carriers will have the necessary capability to operate on the 20 MHz spectrum and that if it is running on a lesser spectrum the promised speeds will simply not be achievable. His feeling is that Verizon, AT&T et al are rushing LTE to compete with Sprint/Clearwire's soon-to-be deployed (in beta form) WiMAX when their time and resources would be better spent continuing to advance 3G technology.

Discuss this subject and all your thoughts on the LTE/4G developments over on 4Gforums.com!