SAN FRANCISCO - AT&T hit back at Verizon's plans to be the first national carrier with 4G LTE technology, saying that Verizon has to hurry because Big Red's 3G network is more limited in speed than AT&T's.
"We don't have the technical limitations of the CDMA network, so our path to LTE isn't 'delayed,'" AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom said.
He's right in that Verizon currently uses CDMA EVDO Rev A, which tops out with 3.1 Mbps downloads. AT&T, meanwhile, is currently upgrading its HSPA 7.2 network to HSPA+ 14.4, and the HSPA+ 3G path currently offers options up to 84 Mbps.
Yesterday at the CTIA Wireless trade show, Verizon president Lowell McAdam said his carrier will roll out 4G LTE to 38 cities and 62 U.S. airports by the end of this year. LTE is important because it's much faster than Verizon's existing wireless Internet system, it has lower latency, and it's a global standard.
AT&T is working to establish a smooth glide path to 4G by raising 3G speeds first, Bloom said. Since 4G initially won't cover entire metro areas, it's important to have faster 3G as well, he said.
"Priority one is you have to have a broad, ubiquitous, high-bandwidth experience. It has to be a very consistent experience wherever you are in the mobile broadband footprint," AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said in September.
In our tests with T-Mobile's HSPA+ 21 network, a good HSPA+ build can provide speeds in the 5-8 Mbps range; Verizon quotes 5-12 Mbps for its initial LTE rollout. However, HSPA+ does have much longer latency than LTE's 30 ms, which makes Internet connections feel slower.
The number-two carrier will also be moving fast on LTE - just not quite as fast as Verizon. AT&T is currently testing the technology in Dallas and Baltimore, and plans to have 70-75 million Americans covered by LTE by the end of 2011, with the network falling back to HSPA+ where LTE isn't available.
AT&T also yesterday introduced the first LTE-ready USB modem in the U.S., the AT&T USBConnect Adrenaline (shown above). I got hands-on time with it last night. It's really chunky, and it doesn't even have HSPA+ - it falls back to HSPA 7.2, a slower version. If you're a bleeding-edge business or geek that wants to be future-ready, it's here, but I'd recommend getting an HSPA+ modem on AT&T for now and switching over to slimmer LTE devices next year.
Verizon has promised LTE modems this year and a half-dozen phones and tablets to be introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show next January, but the carrier hasn't shown any models in public.
Meanwhile, if you're keeping score, the first LTE phone in the U.S. is the Samsung Craft from MetroPCS. For more details, see PCMag's full review.