CTIA: AT&T LTE MIA, All About Verizon

Sorry for the title, although it may be a bit misleading by saying that an AT&T LTE announcement did not take place during CTIA was wrong. It is just the likes of Verizon and T-mobile is now making huge progress, you only have to read our recent article about Big Red opening up LTE to another 38 cities.

I just worry that AT&T will be left behind, and in turn so will Apple with the next iPhone, which is expected to offer 4G download speeds. However, if rumors are true that Verizon will release an iPhone then maybe Apple does not care too much about AT&T’s LTE future.

By the end of 2010 Sprint, T-mobile and Verizon will all have taken huge steps increasing mobile broadband speeds; whereas AT&T have said that they will not be rolling out their LTE until 2011.

Om Malik from GIGAOM has not been impressed with how AT&T is going about its development; we have to wonder if their customers feel a little let down? OK, let us not be too harsh here, yes they are working on LTE, but at a much slower pace than rival carriers.

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Patrick

Unlike VZ's 3G (CDMA) network that peeks at 1.5mb, AT&T & T-Mobile's 3G (HSPA+) networks will peek at 42mb. VZ has to got to LTE this year or their wireless network will be crushed by the data needs of it's smartphones. AT&T & T-Mobile have the luxury of waiting for LTE to become a little more baked before they need to deploy. In the mean time, all 3 companies are working hard to replace the copper T1's to the cell towers with fiber based GigE. The building of fiber thousands of cell sites is the long pole in the tent for all wireless carriers (permits, $30K to $50k per mile, 90-180 day install times).

Another reason some carriers are holding back a little on LTE deployment is spectrum issues. For every LTE deployment a carrier has they will have to either buy new spectrum or take the spectrum from there existing network. With only a handful of LTE devices out there it may make since to keep the spectrum where the devices are (3G).