Try as they might, it appears that AT&T won’t be engaging in a “race” for LTE supremacy. This past week at 4G World in Chicago, AT&T’s Senior Vice President of Architecture and Planning Kris Rinne showed off the company’s LTE roadmap. If you’re accustomed to seeing and hearing Verizon’s boastful specs and rollout updates, you’re going to be sorely disappointed with Ma Bell.
75 million people by the end of 2011 is all that AT&T will muster. Compare that to Verizon’s 150+ million people covered by the end of this year. Clearly, if it’s a race you want, Verizon has already won. –>
Another sour point with AT&T’s 4G plans centers around their use of “Circuit Switched Fall Back” (CSFB). The way CSFB works is that when someone is on a 4G/LTE signal and receives a phone call or text, the phone is kicked back to 3G (or even 2G if 3G isn’t available). What would be more preferable is Voice over LTE via Gan (VoLGA). With this technology, calls and texts are automatically routed through a gateway to the switching centers that currently support voice calls.
Ok ok. So you can put up with AT&T’s slower than average/catch-up LTE rollout. But it’s all forgiven and done with since it will feature peak speeds of…. wait a minute, they don’t know yet? Well, I’m sure AT&T knows, but they’re just not going to tell us. The only thing they will tell us above their future LTE network is that speeds “will be competitive with their competitors”. That folks, is one of the most BS answers you’ll hear. Either their LTE test speeds suck, or…I don’t really know what else.
Gripe I may, yet I’m still looking forward to AT&T 4G. Of course, with Verizon’s LTE coming on line much sooner (and covering far more open land), I may once again jump ship for the first LTE phone that catches my eye, and wallet.
Is AT&T’s turtle-like approach to LTE hampering your excitement?
Source: IntoMobile
