The debate over which technology to bank on for 4G services is becoming more intense day-by-day with industry divided over choice between WiMAX and LTE. A new research from ABI Research however ranks WiMAX way ahead of LTE.

“While LTE does promise data speeds greater than 50Mbps, they have yet to be achieved by live or trial networks, whereas mobile WiMAX is now a tried and tested standard,” says ABI Research Analyst, Bhavya Khanna.

The research says that in 2010, LTE networks will be limited to handling only data traffic as LTE-voice standards are still in the development stage and there is lack of compatible handsets.

ABI cites that globally there are 164 mobile WiMAX networks on trial or commercially live. But there are only over 100 LTE trials presently being conducted across the globe.

The research says that there are 242 network contract management deals for mobile WiMAX while comparing figures for LTE are 38.