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This year's 4G World was held during the last week of October in Chicago.  As we have done in years past, we leveraged the event to identify key themes that were of interest to us in order to identify topics for future reports and to provide preliminary perspectives in this issue.   

·       Sprint's Vision.  The LTE story is well known, as is the operator's relationship with LightSquared.  However, the operator's plan for its legacy network is where the real story lies.  With a [non-free] do-over, Sprint has the opportunity to do what it couldn't achieve before:  1X Advanced, multi-carrier DO and certain DO Advanced features, plus global implications. 

·       VoLTE. VoLTE may not have been widely discussed, but we have some updated perspectives, which are largely cautionary in nature regarding the market opportunity and widespread availability of the burgeoning voice service. Thanks to Release 9 features, CSFB may not be so bad after all. 

·       HetNet. HetNet seemed to be the single biggest theme with the largest percentage of the exhibitors focused on it, including virtually every single backhaul solution and strategy known to mankind.  The big question for us is whether or not HetNet creates an opportunity for new entrants or if the spoils will be divided among an operator's incumbent infrastructure suppliers. 

·       MIMO.  The pendulum has shifted the other way.  HSPA+ with MIMO can still happen, but it may not be until DC-HSDPA (84Mbps) takes center stage.  

·       Pushing Content to the Cell Edge.  On the heels of our user experience benchmarking study, it was also nice to hear that the industry is looking at innovative ways to push content to the edge of the cell, including down tothe macro eNodeB or even to the femtocell.