LTE North America Award preview - Significant Progress for a Commercial Launch of LTE by a carrier

The LTE North America awards 2011 are taking place on the 8th November 2011 at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, Texas, USA. The awards celebrate the innovation and excellence in that has taken place over the past 12 months in the LTE industry and features 60 nominees across 9 categories.

In the lead up to the awards, we are featuring close looks at each of the companies shortlisted and here we bring you a preview of the category: Significant Progress for a Commercial Launch of LTE by a carrier – 2010/11.

AT&T; AT&T LTE launch

AT&T is one of the largest operators in the world and the biggest in the US market, so the launch of its long-awaited LTE service in September was always going to be of significance. The US incumbent has launched LTE initially in five markets, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio and says that it plays to add at least 10 more by the end of the year, covering 70 million Americans. It expects to complete its deployment by the end of 2013. It says that customers receive download speeds of approximately 5-12Mbps, and uploads speeds of approximately 2-5Mbps in most markets and customers can fall back to HSPA+ when out of LTE range. It currently has four LTE enabled devices; the HTC Jetstream tablet, the USBConnect Momentum 4G, the Mobile Hotspot Elevate 4G, and the USBConnect Adrenaline and more devices are on their way. It offers 5GB of data for a monthly rate of $50, with additional data available for $10 per each GB provided but Smartphone data plan pricing has not yet been announced.

MetroPCS;MetroPCS’ 4G LTE

MetroPCS isn’t a network that often makes headlines but it did so in September 2010 when it became the very first US network to launch an LTE network, ahead of major rivals such as Verizon Wireless. Since then, it has deployed LTE in all 14 of its core markets and expects to achieve a one-on-one overlay to its existing CDMA network in 2012. It later achieved another first, launching the Samsung Craft, the world’s first 4G LTE handset and followed this up with the Samsung Galaxy Indulge, the world’s first commercially available 4G LTE Android smartphone. MetroPCs offers US$60 service plans and key attractions are its MetroSTUDIO entertainment hub offering streaming video and a partnership with Rhapsody, the leading on-demand music service, giving its customers access to more than 12 million songs in Rhapsody’s vast music catalogue.

Rogers Communications Inc; LTE Beyond 4G

Rogers is the leading Canadian operator and launched its LTE service in July 2011 after running tests since the end of 2010. Rogers claims that its network is the first multi-band LTE network to be deployed, as it operates on both AWS and 2.6GHz frequencies. Field tests had to ensure smooth handover between the two and Rogers says that this means that it has resulted in significant advancement of handover functionality. In conjunction with Ericsson, Rogers also created a LTE showcase based on board a coach, consisting of an HD full duplex video conferencing and gaming, a field services scenario consisting of LTE enable tablets, white boarding, video conferencing and file transfer, and a news camera scenario consisting of news camera uploads live video via LTE and downloaded and displayed at another location via LTE all in real-time.