LTE beats Competition

     Long Term Evolution, more commonly known as LTE, has been featured in one of my past posts. I had been comparing it to Sprint's Wimax, which had far more test locations than VZW's LTE. But now, the tortoise has beat the hair. Now... LTE takes all the headlines and is the clear winner of cellular wireless technology. So what do providers say about their own technology? AT&T and Sprint stick by their identical phrase of "Speeds up to 10x faster than 3G". Verizon boasts about 5-12 Mbps download and 2-5 Mbps upload.

Above: AT&T's coverage as of Jan. 12, 2012

Above: Sprint's coverage as of Jan. 12, 2012

Above: Verizon's coverage as of Jan. 12, 2012

Above: Verizon's northeastern coverage as of Jan. 12, 2012
     Just a quick overview of the move into 4G LTE for some of the top cellular providers. If you're due for an upgrade... Now is the time to strongly consider upgrading to a LTE capable phone, as you may find yourself regretting the decision when your friends are cruising the web in the fast lane, and you're just merging into the slow lane.

Verizon's LTE vs. Sprint's WiMAX

As of 8/14/2009 I wrote up this halfass post on cell phone technology... didn't like it, so I never posted. Today I'm throwing it out there as a post, old info or not, with the hopes that I will follow this with updated post, soon.

     Chances are good your familiar with the term 3G, the wireless generation. As you may know, it's not even fully nation wide. Now, 4G is attempting to squeeze in. Maybe it's the same battle such as Betamax vs. VHS, or Blue-ray vs. HD DVD. The victor becomes the standard and the flop becomes dead weight for the company who supported it. In this case it's Sprint supporting WiMAX and Verizon supporting Long Term Evolution (LTE). The difference is similar yet very different in some many respects.

As you can see the spread of WiMAX greatly overwhelms LTE currently as of this writing. (Shaded area does not mean coverage area).

Lets start with WiMAX, as it already has roots in sixteen states. It's backed by Intel Capital, Comcast, Sprint, Google, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks.

Now we have LTE, which just finished initial testing of 10 sites in Boston and Seattle.

Resources:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219300110&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All