As Auction 73 slows to a crawl, vendors prepare their gear for the still-unnamed spectrum winners

Ericsson today said it plans to produce network infrastructure and device-side chips for the 700 MHz frequencies in both the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and Long-Term Evolution (LTE) flavors, giving it a product for any of the eventual Auction 73 winners--no matter who they are.

While Ericsson did not unveil a particular product today, Arun Bhikshesvaran, Ericsson’s vice president of strategy and chief technology officer for North America, said rebanding to 700 MHz was a simple task, requiring only that Ericsson change out the radio frequency (RF) front end of its existing or future base station lines. “What we’re announcing today are product plans to produce a complete ecosystem for LTE and HSPA at 700 MHz,” Bhikshesvaran said.

Ericsson is the second major cellular infrastructure vendor to explicitly commit to build an equipment line at 700 MHz for commercial operators—Nokia Siemens announced plans to support 700 MHz across its entire line of Flexi WiMAX and UMTS base stations in August. But certainly neither company will be the last. With Auction 73 in its final gasps, the FCC is expected to announce the winners shortly, revealing to the vendor community the identities of their potential customers. In addition, the WiMAX Forum said at Mobile World Congress that it would create a WiMAX certification profile at 700 MHz, opening the door for WiMAX vendors to build equipment and devices at that band. Between now and CTIA Wireless in April, many of the major 3G and 4G vendors are expected to reveal their own 700 MHz portfolios and product timelines.

Bhikshesvaran said Ericsson can have a 700 MHz HSPA base station ready for a customer in six months -- it simply needs a product order. The LTE 700 MHz profile, meanwhile, will be included in Ericsson’s regular rollout schedule. It plans to have embedded modules for devices ready for shipment in the second half of 2009 and to have a commercial LTE base station ready at the end of 2009.

Ericsson is already in a particularly good position to sell its new 700 MHz wares. The only operator known to already have a good deal of 700 MHz licenses, AT&T, is already one of Ericsson’s biggest customers. AT&T has committed to building LTE networks in the future, but it may also choose to launch additional HSPA networks over the airwaves. Verizon Wireless has also committed to building out LTE, and that operator is expected to be one of the big winners in the current 700 MHz auction. But VZW is working in conjunction with part-owner Vodafone in a joint global trial involving not only Ericsson but all of its major competitors.

What Ericsson can’t offer the 700 MHz winners, though, is a WiMAX solution. The vendor eschewed the technology long ago in favor of the traditional GSM evolutionary path to LTE. Nokia Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel Networks and Motorola are producing both WiMAX and LTE platforms as are new Asian entrants Huawei, ZTE and Samsung. As the dust settles from the 700 MHz auction, a war may start brewing between WiMAX and LTE as both camps fight for contracts. Ericsson won’t be put in the awkward position of pushing two competing technologies simultaneously, but it also may cost the vendor any time to market advantage as WiMAX is already commercially available.

Many of the winning operators of the 700 MHz auction will likely also be small regional CDMA operators that probably couldn’t care less about 4G right now. The only vendor to have announced a CDMA 1X base station at 700 MHz is Alcatel-Lucent, but that kit is targeted solely at public safety providers with emergency spectrum.