The big cheeses at Nortel have decided against going with WiMAX for 4G networks and at the same time have given the thumbs up to LTE.

Nortel signed a deal with Alvarion, which it said in a statement would help it achieve faster 'time to market' with WiMAX, although reading between the lines that's not entirely the case.

It said that firms like China Mobile, Verizon and NTT Docomo are moving fast to roll out LTE which, in a rare lyrical flourish from a telco, Nortel described as the 'tip of the iceberg'.

LTE is much favoured by Huawei, a Chinese giant which emanated from the People's Liberation Army some time ago and which remains privately owned.

WiMAX, which Intel and other giants appear to favour, is basically metropolitan broadband wireless but implementing it is taking somewhat longer than the chip giant originally hoped for. X