O2 has just announced that they’ve begun trialing 4G LTE in London and that by the end of this month they’ll have over 25 cell towers up and running covering 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) of the capital city with ultra high speed connectivity. They don’t say how much spectrum they’ll be using, but O2 does specify that they’ll be operating in the 2.6 GHz band. In other words, unless you’re right by a window, don’t expect to get any coverage. If you live in the UK and want to try this network out, then head on over to Gizmodo UK and follow their instructions to get a chance to become one of 30 lucky people to get a Samsung B3730 USB modem. O2 say that they’re going to be running the test network until June 2012 and that roughly 1,000 people will be taking part in making sure it actually delivers on its promise.
The bigger question is of course when will the network go live so that ordinary people can start using it? The sad answer is late 2013, and you have to blame the government for that. Auctions for 4G LTE spectrum were supposed to take place in early 2012, but that’s now been pushed back to Q4 2012. After the auction is over, it’s going to take at least a full year for operators to build out their networks, so late 2013 is a conservative bet for when our friends in Jolly Ol’ England will be able to get their high speed fix. To put that into some perspective, Sweden and Norway got 4G LTE in late 2009, Americans got 4G LTE in December 2010, and Japan’s Softback recently announced that they plan on covering 92% of the population of their small country by the end of 2012.
That being said, we still think 42 Mbps HSPA+ is better than 4G LTE in most cases. It delivers better battery life, enables smaller form factors, and it uses the spectrum that operators already own.