AT&T looks to outpace Verizon with 28.7Mbps LTE network demo

US carrier AT&T has given a demonstration of its forthcoming LTE network, achieving download speeds of  28.7Mbps and uploads of 10.4Mbps.

The demo was given to website GigaOm, during a tour of AT&T’s Texas facilities. The carrier claims that this is close to the level of speed customers should expect to see when the service goes live, though the AT&T network engineer confirmed that speeds would inevitably drop once cell towers started to load up.

Nevertheless, the operator still hopes that the speeds will be consistently faster than that of Verizon Wireless, which top out at 5-12Mbps for download, giving it a marketing advantage over its rival. The operator said the speeds were around seven times faster than the best speeds that can be achieved with its current HSPA network.

The network demo used MIMO antennas but not carrier aggregation technology and operated over both 700MHz spectrum and 1700MHz AWS spectrum. The operator expects to acquire more of this through its planned merger with T-Mobile USA.

AT&T is currently the second largest operator in the US, with a 30.8 per cent market share according to WCIS statistics. It has not officially confirmed when it will launch its LTE service but a June timeframe is expected.

There were strong rumours that Apple had delayed its iPhone 5 launch to coincide with AT&T’s LTE network but latest reports suggest that due to LTE chipsets shortages Apple will not be able to make this timeframe, and will release a model tweak instead named the iPhone 4S.

Last week Verizon announced that it had extended its LTE network into nine additional markets, covering 55 markets in total.