It was only for a brief while when industry players projected that WiMAX and 3G are not competing technologies but would compliment each other. But with the race for technological adoption to drive uptake of mobile broadband services becoming fiercer, the debate is gradually turning out to be more blunt and aggressive in tone.

While the WiMAX lobby claims that the technology is already 4G ready today, the proponents of 3G have started to oppose this claim rather strongly now. Ericsson CTO, Hakan Eriksson said an interview to technology blog, GigaOm that LTE is the only 4G technology and it is wrong to say that WiMAX also belongs to 4G.

“They are four years late so they have to call it 4G,” said Eriksson. The CTO said that ITU is yet to declare WiMAX as a 4G technology.

Presenting the actual subscriber facts, the CTO further said, “There are 400 million people using 3G (HSDPA/WCDMA) technologies today,” Eriksson stated, adding that “there will be 70 million people using WiMAX in five years.”

The CTO also said that future handsets will have to be data compatible.