Yota, one of the first operators in the world to launch a network based on WiMAX technology, has dumped the Intel backed standard in favor of LTE, which has recently gained global acceptance by over 100 operators according to the GSA. Their first network covers the 3rd largest city in Russia, Kazan, and it’s over 1 million people with network speeds of around 100 Mbps using a little less than 150 cell towers. What’s more impressive is that the network took only 2 months to build and cost only $20 million. Yota has committed to launching LTE in 5 other Russian cities this year, and will spend another $100 million in order to execute on that goal.
The Cold Ware has now officially restarted since America has yet to launch their first LTE network, and while Verizon Wireless has said they’re going to have 4G covering 30 markets by the end of this year, they’re only promising network speeds of between 5 and 12 Mbps. A far cry from the 100 Mbps the Russians are getting, and the roughly 80 Mbps the Swedes are getting courtesy of TeliaSonera.
Speaking of TeliaSonera, the first operator in the world to launch a commercial LTE network, they’ve only recently turned on the high speed wireless technology to Sweden’s second largest city, Gothenburg, this summer. They’ve got a long ways to go to cover all of ABBA-land, but they’ve proved that their 4G technology is robust enough to deploy on a large scale. Since December 2009 TeliaSonera has been giving customers consistent speeds of over 25 Mbps, with bursts in the 85 to 90 Mbps range. The only LTE devices thus far have been USB dongles.
You don’t need 4G to get high speeds though, just ask Australian operator Telstra, who last week launched their 42 Mbps HSPA+ network that gives between 10 and 20 Mbps of real world speed. That’s as fast, and in some cases faster, than what Verizon is going to launch, and unlike LTE, HSPA+ supports voice and SMS, the two most profitable services that operators have been using to make money since the beginning of time.