strung

This is a great question. Both the CDMA and wimax chips run real-time operating systems to handle themselves (CDMA is often called the baseband) so your smartphone actually runs 3 OS's at the same time, in a way. However reprogramming is unlikely. The CDMA chip probably wouldn't have the computational ability to do the OFDM multiplexing (a CPU-intensive process) needed for LTE/Wimax. OFDM basically allows radios to jam more bits into their transmission, enabling higher speeds. Politically, any changes to radio configuration in devices requires re-certification from the FCC, a costly process that there is little incentive for carriers or device manufacturers to undertake. It's more likely that the Wimax radio could be reprogrammed to "speak" LTE, but again that I'm fairly certain would require FCC approval.