PARIS (WiMAX Day). According to a recent interview by the French on-line technology portal YouVox with Stephane Couturier, Development Director of Samsung’s mobile division in France, UMTS and HSDPA networks are currently saturated with data traffic, and operators need to upgrade to 4G technologies.

Couturier said that telecom operators need to “put in place equipment faster and more powerful to be able to meet the demand from their customers.” The clear choice today for networks is WiMAX technology, as the alternative, Long Term Evolution (LTE) is still evolving and will be not ready for a few more years.

“The first test pilot for LTE could begin in 2010-2011 and the first deployments of this technology could begin in 2012 for commercial offers late 2012 early 2013.” Thus by the time LTE is ready for commercial use, WiMAX will have covered the world.

Many of the world’s largest Tier-1 mobile networks have already committed to deploy WiMAX networks, while others say they will wait for LTE technology. “This cacophony could penalize the development of 4G, because as we have seen the alternative LTE is not yet available,” said Couturier.