China Mobile in LTE camp

China Mobile (363.33 million subscribers in December 2007), the largest mobile operator in the world, announced it would be lending support to LTE as next generation cellular standard. China Mobile will join Vodafone‘s (252.3 million subscribers in December 2007) and Verizon Wireless‘ (63.7 million subscribers in September 2007) LTE technology trial.

The announcement places the three leading operators from the different 3G technology standards (TD-SCDMA for China Mobile, WCDMA/HSPA for Vodafone and EV-DO for Verizon) in the same camp for the next generation of wireless access WAN technology. This suggests that LTE will emerge as the leading 4G technology ahead of WiMax or UMB.

Considering that three out of four nationwide US mobile operators (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon) are now in the 3GPP technology camp, what will be Sprint’s (CDMA 2000 EV-DO Rev A and later Rev B, plus an overlay WiMax) next move?