Broadcom Corporation just announced their acquisition of Beceem Communications amidst some fanfare from the wireless community. Broadcom is already a powerful player and innovator in the telecommunications industry and their acquisition of Beceem bring them even more leverage to innovate with. Hopefully, they’ll also pump a lot of new life into the next generation of handsets, which is what everyone watching the development of new wireless infrastructure is waiting for.

The kicker of this whole process for everyone else is this, from their press release:

Beceem has announced the industry’s first 4G multimode platform that can support both LTE and WiMAX 4G networks. Supporting peak broadband download speeds of up to 200Mbps, this technology will enable truly mobile broadband connectivity for smartphones, mobile computing, consumer electronics products and wireless gateways.

LTE and WiMAX 4G networks have been a little bit slow on arrival, it seems, with growths slowly popping up in major cities. A handset that utilize both network infrastructures will give some very happy handset brand an edge over the others in these early development stages.

“The combination of Beceem and Broadcom creates a leader in providing multimode wireless connectivity solutions to service providers and equipment manufacturers around the world,” said Scott Bibaud, Broadcom’s Executive Vice President & General Manager of the Mobile Platforms Group. “Beceem’s talented teams of engineers in India and the U.S. have been focused on enabling a 4G ecosystem of operators and equipment manufacturers to drive the deployment of 4G networks. We look forward to adding their innovative technologies to our product portfolio and providing these technologies to our customers.”

Beceem’s Chief Executive Officer, Surendra Babu Mandava, said: “When combined with Broadcom’s 2G and 3G cellular solutions and broader wired and wireless communications portfolio, our 4G products will enable operators to roll out next generation wireless broadband solutions while providing support for existing networks. Our combined offering will be one of the most extensive and formidable in the industry.”

The greater adoption of 4G handsets by the general population will also greatly accelerate the expansion of LTE and WiMAX infrastructure. Bridging the handset gap between 2G/3G and 4G will enable this for the consumer base who only contain so many buyers who want to live on the bleeding edge. With the current limited 4G coverage it will be hybrid handsets that rule the day until LTE’s “long-term evolution” plays itself out.