A group of leaders in the wireless industry comprised of Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, Kineto Wireless, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nortel, Samsung, Starent Networks, T-Mobile and ZTE have announced a joint effort, referred to as the Voice over LTE via Generic Access (VoLGA) Forum

Verizon plans to have LTE ready for trial in two cities in the US by late 2009, with 25 to 30 cities deployed commercially in 2010. LTE handsets, however, may not appear until 2011.

Qualcomm has has stopped development of its next-generation, high-speed wireless technology Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) which was originally intended as an alternative to LTE and WiMAX 4G telecomunications standards.

...Today, wireless operators control content, but the power they wield is in subsidies for handsets. When Apple came along with its iPhone, it changed the trend. It told operators, 'Get lost, don't subsidize and don't tell us what to do. We can sell the handset with no problem and give unlimited Internet access.' The wireless companies are trying to stop it but WiMAX will change things. Content is king, so wireless networks are the ones that supply the pipeline. They're not interesting in the least."...