We at IntoMobile thought that Verizon was going to launch their 4G LTE network by the end of this month, but a new commercial, the first that even mentions their upcoming network, says that it’s going to be switched on in December. That’s only a week away, and besides, the first devices that will be able to take advantage of the increased bandwidth and ultra low latencies that LTE provides are going to be nothing more than USB modems. Recently there’s been talk the the first LTE equipped smartphones are due to hit the market as early as February 2011, which is a lot earlier than what many in the industry have predicted, but either way we’re not going to see a huge glut of LTE equipped mobile phones until at least 2012 or even 2013.
Since December 2009, when Sweden and Norway became the first two countries in the world to get LTE, courtesy of operator TeliaSonera, the world has been watching and waiting to see what the Americans would do. Unlike Europe, which hopes to have every country using the same 800 MHz band to build next generation high speed networks, Verizon and AT&T are going to use the 700 MHz band. Unlike America however, TeliaSonera delivers close to 100 Mbps to their customers, while Verizon is saying that they’ll only do 5 to 12 Mbps, a full order of magnitude slower. Their performance can only go up, and there’s even talk of introducing speed tiers so that people who would rather consume a lot of data can do so at a slower speed, while those who need to pirate the latest music they heard on MTV can grab their MP3 files in no time at all.
Your best bet for high speed internet browsing on smartphones today is T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network, which is hitting 21 Mbps and will double to 42 Mbps next year. AT&T is in the process of upgrading their network to do 21 Mbps, and it’s going to take a while to complete.
[Via: Pocket Now]