AT&T Promises To Expand LTE To More US Markets 105
WIn5t0n writes "Even though AT&T has now promoted itself to the 'Largest 4G Network' (HSPA+), it is still lagging far behind in advancing its LTE Coverage. AT&T's largest competitor, Verizon, has turned up the heat on the company now that it claims to cover 75 percent of US population with LTE, while AT&T's network only fully covers a few cities. However, AT&T has recognized consumer unrest and has planned to expand its 4G LTE coverage into '48 new markets' by the end of the year. With the iPhone 5 (rumored to have LTE capabilities) likely to be in consumers hands by the end of this month, AT&T is now feeling the pressure to make sure its customers can take full advantage of their new phones on a faster network. The company's full rollout of 4G LTE coverage is not scheduled to be complete until at least 2013."
Re:LTE compatablity between major carriers. (Score:3, Informative)
Frequency bands for GSM are different between what European carriers generally use and what US/Candian carriers use because of previus spectrum allocation. Hence why GSM phones have to support mutilple bands if they want to be useful. This is no different with LTE. There are sets of bands that can be used but an LTE chip is not necessarily required to support them all just as a GSM chip doesn't necessarily have to support all bands. Finally, yes, LTE is an ITU standard.