Asian Markets with New LTE-Advanced Leave U.S. & Europe Playing Catch-Up

[dgstorm]

It looks like the U.S. and Europe are now playing catch-up when it comes to faster wireless internet speeds. Several new Asian markets have started popping up sporting the newer LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation method. This type of LTE-Advanced combines two levels of electromagnetic spectrum into one to offer greater speeds.

The newest market to start firing up a faster network is Telstra in Australia. They join SK Telecom, which was the first to rollout this technology. Telstra LTE-Advanced brings wireless download speeds of up to 150Mbps by combining their 900 MHz spectrum and their 1800 MHz airwaves. Additionally, they can splice more spectrum into this later on to achieve 300Mbps (for this type of LTE-Advanced). This is about four times faster than anything in the U.S. and three times faster than Europe and Canada.

Luckily, the companies in Europe and North America aren't too far behind. T-Mobile and Verizon are already planning to launch their first LTE-Advanced networks within the coming months, and within the next three years all the major U.S. carriers will be offering some version of carrier aggregated LTE-Advanced. Also, although carriers in Europe are a bit farther behind, when they do start to roll it out, it shouldn't take too long because they are sitting on a great deal of spectrum they can combine all at once.

It will definitely be interesting to see how these faster speeds translate into real-world performance on our smart devices.

Source: GigaOM

 

[bweN diorD]

the LG G2 is the only phone i have seen coming out for us that has the radio to handle this.

 

[pc747]

Curious what early hiccups they may run into. I am reminded of the tbolt i bought which was the first lte phone and there were some hiccups. It was like lte went like once a week . It was like the moment they flipped the switch for one market its like the lights went off on the other markets. But once they finally got it up and going it has been reliable.

 

[johnomaz]

Why are people so worried about faster LTE. Current gen LTE is giving 20-30Mb down and 15Mb up...on a phone. With the vast majority of people on limited data plans, is it really that big of a deal? Even if we all had 100% unlimited plans, is 30Mb down considered slow?

 

[kodiak799]

Why are people so worried about faster LTE. Current gen LTE is giving 20-30Mb down and 15Mb up...on a phone. With the vast majority of people on limited data plans, is it really that big of a deal? Even if we all had 100% unlimited plans, is 30Mb down considered slow?

And fast enough for any website, including Netflix HD. Worth noting in larger markets, however, that speeds of 8-12mbps are more common (at least during peak times). STILL sufficiently fast even for Netflix HD.

It only matters on an assumption that more bandwidth could mean unlimited data, perhaps including tethering. I'm not sure how other markets work, but as I said before there are other issues in the US with truly unlimited mobile data being a threat to pipe providers' home broadband revenues (and perhaps even cable).