Poland becomes the 4th (5th?) country in the world to switch on LTE [153 Mbps down, 48 Mbps up]

CenterNet and Mobyland, two Polish operators, have just announced that they’ve launched an LTE network using 20 MHz of spectrum on the 1800 MHz band according to LTE World. By the end of this year an estimated 700 cell towers will be covering over 7 million people with mobile broadband that achieves as much as 153 Mbps on the download and 48 Mbps on the upload. Together they’ve made Poland the 4th country in the world to get LTE, though that claim is debatable.

The first two countries to get LTE were Norway and Sweden, back in December 2009 when TeliaSonera proudly switched the service on in both cities simultaneously. They’ve recently upgraded their Swedish network to support 40 MHz of spectrum and recent independent tests done by IDG found that average network speeds were around 33.4 Mbps down, and 12.7 Mbps up.

The third commercial LTE network to go live was in Uzbekistan, which I know sounds odd, but they’re supported by Russian operator MTS who has more money than you or I can spend in a lifetime. Their network is using an untold amount of spectrum in the 2.5 to 2.7 GHz band. It’s supposed to hit 100 Mbps, but no one has actually gone out to test it.

The fourth country to get LTE was Russia, courtesy of Yota, who was a WiMAX operator, but then decided that supporting a technology that has no future would be a waste of time and energy.

The only networks above to have concrete reliable sources confirm that it’s actually working and not just PR fluff are TeliaSonera’s Swedish and Norwegian networks. This fifth network launched today, or fourth depending on who you want to believe, doesn’t go into detail about business models or what types of devices will be available at launch, but USB LTE modems are high on the list of usual suspects.

Note that the 6th LTE network to go live will probably be that of Vodafone Germany, and we’re still waiting for Verizon and MetroPCS to bring LTE to the U S of A.