Alvarion one of the global leader in the WiMax market, with most extensive customer base with hundreds of commercial WiMAX deployments, has stated that it will add support for TD-Long Term Evolution (LTE) to its platform in the next few years, according to Light Reading article.

The announcement comes in a time when many existing WiMAX operators are considering TD-LTE as a future growth path for WiMAX. Recent Indian BWA auction winners, RIL acquired Infotel & Aircel already have shown interest in TD-LTE. They may choose WiMAX for initial deployments but would eventually migrate to TD-LTE.

Alvarion's TD-LTE interest is consistent with the other WiMAX vendors like Motorola, Huawei, and ZTE to provide both technologies with software upgrades on their hardware platforms.

Motorola recently announced WiMAX Evolution solution for operators to upgrade existing WiMAX 802.16e / 802.16e Enhanced networks to 802.16m or TD-LTE to add LTE to their existing WiMAX networks.

Similar to others Alvarion may provide software upgrade path from WiMAX 802.16e to 802.16m or TD-LTE when it includes LTE in its platform.

As initially hoped, some of BWA winners may not go for mobile WiMAX and might follow TD-LTE  path, It might have forced Alvarion to reconsider it's WiMAX only portfolio & plan to include TD-LTE as well.