Verizon, the nation's leading telecommunications company, today said that mobile users in 461 cities across the United States now get fifty percent faster peak wireless data speeds thanks to LTE Advanced, the next generation of wireless technology.
A major enhancement of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, LTE Advanced uses existing cell towers and a software technique called carrier aggregation which combines multiple channels to transfer data more quickly than with LTE.
Apple's upcoming iPhone 6 could feature support for faster LTE-Advanced networking which promises theoretical download speeds of up to 300Mbps. A claimed iPhone 6 logic board photo suggests Apple may have opted for the slower 150Mbps LTE-Advanced by replacing Qualcomm's MDM9615 chip in prior iPhones with a MDM9625 part.
Originally announced back in 2012, the MDM9625 chipset supports upload and download LTE-Advanced data speeds of 150Mbps versus the MDM9615 chip found in the iPhone 5s, iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c which tops out at 100Mbps.
A handful of the world's carriers have only recently begun rolling out LTE-Advanced so Apple may have opted to support only the 150Mbps LTE-Advanced in anticipation of the faster 300Mbps roll-out...
Folks living in and around Chicago will be happy to hear that AT&T has souped up its network in the Windy City. Using an LTE-Advanced technology called 'carrier aggregation,' the company has bonded two 4G networks together in the area resulting in a big boost in performance.
So essentially, AT&T is taking two, single one-way highways and merging them into one, single two-way highway, allowing for more bandwidth and theoretical download speeds of up to 110 Mbps. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of devices that support the beefier network...
There has been little, if any, confirmation regarding the next iPhone's improvements in the cellular radio technology department, which hasn't stopped pundits from speculating whether or not the iPhone 5S features support for the ultra-fast LTE Advanced standard, also known as LTE-A or simply LTE+.
Samsung notably promised to offer an updated version of the Galaxy S4 with LTE+ soon and now a cryptic comment by Deutsche Telekom suggests the iPhone 5S could in fact work with the latest cellular networking technology that offers at least twice the download speeds of the current-generation LTE standard...
AT&T, the second largest wireless provider in the United States by customer base, started sending out invitations yesterday to several major media outlets for a mysterious media event it's going to be hosting on July 16.
Other than the cryptic message "Get ready for what's next in wireless," the invites don't really offer up any details on what the event could be about. But given that AT&T is a carrier, it's not hard to speculate on the matter...
T-Mobile USA may be planning to leapfrog its rivals by becoming the first U.S. wireless carrier to offer up to three times faster LTE Advanced cellular radio technology, but over in South Korea the SK Telecom carrier already announced last Wednesday it's become the world's first telco to launch LTE Advanced network.
As you could imagine, Samsung Electronics CEO J.K. Shin wasted no time confirming his company will launch an LTE Advanced version of its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone, thanks to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 chip. And now, SK Telecom is understood to be in talks with Tim Cook & Co. over offering an LTE Advanced variant of Apple's upcoming iPhone 5S handset...
T-Mobile is the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the United States and also the furthest behind of the four major telcos in terms of deployment of the fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) cellular technology.
You'll recall T-Mobile has only begun testing its LTE last month, ahead of its April 12 iPhone distribution deal with Apple.
Right now, T-Mobile has LTE towers in just seven cities and their coverage plans call for 100 million LTE users by the end of the summer and 200 million by the end of the year.
Despite the slow pace of LTE deployment, the carrier thinks it can do better and take its rivals by surprise by deploying LTE Advanced fast, tapping its existing hardware already in place...