LTE, oh LTE, we can’t wait for LTE, but the truth of the matter is that it’s at least a few years off until we have LTE equipped mobile phones. Bad news out of the way, let’s concentrate on the good stuff: Mobistar, Belgium’s second largest mobile operator, got a license from the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications to build a test network in the Evere-Diegem zone. The results have been nothing but spectacular: 60 megabit per second downloads, and 18 millisecond latency within the network. That’s 10x faster data throughput compared to the speeds offered by the 7.2 megabit per second that’s live today, which also has a latency of 70 milliseconds.
Mobistar plans to offer 14.4 megabit per second speeds by the end of the summer, and 28.8 megabit per second speed by the end of the year. These upgrades just take a simple software update to current cell sites, and some upgrades to backhaul equipment to carry all those Facebook status updates and naughty pictures that kids are sending these days.
No word as to when their LTE network will commercially launch, or what they’ll charge for the service, but don’t you worry, we’ll tracking the LTE space, marking each and every incremental step towards progress, because we can’t wait to be able to pirate 720p Blueray rips while picnicking in the park with our love ones.
Oh and one more thing, while we’re on the topic of LTE: how come we’re hearing that TeliaSonera in Sweden is able to give customers greater than 25 megabit per second speeds, and now Mobistar is testing up to 60 megabits per second, yet Verizon’s internal documents are claiming that real world figures that customers can come to expect are between 5 and 12 megabits per second. That’s several times slower. Is Verizon doing something wrong or are the European operators simply using higher grade gear?
[Via: Cellular News]