AT&T Launches LTE 4G Network Sunday
AT&T will launch its Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G network on Sunday, September 18, the company’s CFO John Stephens has declared during an Entertainment & Communications conference at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The LTE network, which allows much faster data transfer, will first launch in five U.S. cities: Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Dallas and San Antonio, but the company wants to expand the service into 15 new markets by the end of 2011.
“That coverage will continue to expand in the next few years and is planned to be largely complete by the end of 2013,” AT&T stated on its website.
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The new LTE network is designed to cover 80 percent of the U.S. population, according to the International Business Times.
AT&T currently caters to 90 million customers.
As far as the LTE’s speed goes, AT&T said that the service will be "comparable" to Verizon's LTE 4G network. Verizon advertises a standard of 5-Mbps to 12-Mbps downloads and 2-Mbps to 3-Mbps uploads.
Though AT&T did not release specific information about the network’s speed, it said that it has upgraded the software of its nationwide mobile broadband network with HSPA+ (a technical standard for wireless and broadband communications) which “speeds up to 4 times faster than AT&T's already fast mobile broadband speeds.”
“Stream your favorite movies with less buffering,” AT&T encourages on its website. “Download and view HD movies faster. Download songs in a few beats.”
The service will cost $50 per month for 5GB.
Last month, AT&T announced the first batch of its LTE gear: an LTE mobile hotspot and an LTE laptop dongle.
The network's long expected LTE smartphone is scheduled to arrive within the next few months.
Currently only three AT&T devices are compatible with the upcoming network: the HTC Jetstream tablet, the Mobile Hotspot Elevate 4G and the USBConnect Momentum 4G modem.
