Verizon touts average LTE speeds of 5-12Mbps
The game of spinning performance figures begins with reports of peak downloads 50Mbps in city trials
Published: 9 March, 2010
READ MORE: Metrics | US | Verizon | LTE
As carriers start to see the results of field trials, and even commercial deployments, of LTE, the game of spinning the performance figures begins. We've already seen considerable dispute over the real world data rates of the world's first commercial LTE network, at Baltic carrier TeliaSonera, and now Verizon Wireless is entering the fray.
The US carrier says it is seeing throughput speeds in its LTE network tests that reach peaks between 40Mbps and 50Mbps for download, and 20Mbps to 25Mbps for upload. The tests were conducted in Boston and Seattle. The maximum rates have increased since its previous update, but average speeds have remained the same, at 5-12Mbps for download and 2-5Mbps for upload.
Verizon plans to launch 25-30 commercial LTE markets this year, covering around 100m POPs, and will double the number of markets covered in 2011. In some areas where it has blank spots in its CDMA EV-DO coverage, it will bypass 3G altogether and go straight to LTE. This is a very different strategy from that of European early movers, which are mainly seeing LTE as a technology for high capacity urban use rather than rural access (despite some of the political statements). But these operators, unlike Verizon, have lower cost options for rural expansion in low frequencies, notably HSPA in 900MHz.
Of course, the real test of carriers' early LTE networks will be real world experience. The cellcos have learned this lesson in 3G, and in Europe in particular, are under increasing pressure to advertise average rather than peak data rates for their HSPA dongles and PCs. While most can get the most common iteration of HSPA (theoretical download peak 7.2Mbps) to about 6Mbps in tests, real life experience most users see average speeds closer to 3Mbps when stationary and 1Mbps when mobile.
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