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AT&T pits its 4G LTE against Verizon's with first smartphone(Connected Planet Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) This Sunday, AT&T is taking LTE live in four more markets and is introducing its first smartphones capable of accessing its new ultra-fast network, setting up a mobile broadband showdown between AT&T and its arch-rival Verizon Wireless at least in the markets where their LTE networks overlap. Verizon definitely has the head start, offering the fastest smartphone speeds on the airwaves for nearly a year. Verizon also has a far more extensive network, covering 155 markets to AT&T’s nine (CP: 2011 LTE goal reach, Verizon continues expansion). It also has several more devices capable of accessing that network. But AT&T is making the most of the assets it does have, and according to the operator it has one major advantage: it has another 4G network to back up its 4G network. While Verizon mobile broadband customers fall back on CDMA 1X EV-DO when they leave LTE coverage, receiving mere 3G speeds, AT&T customers in the same situation will default to its HSPA networks. In major markets that means they’ll have access to HSPA+ speeds. The average HSPA+ speeds AT&T is seeing often outmatch the theoretical ceiling EV-DO revision A can support. According to AT&T, that will give AT&T LTE customers a far more consistent experience as they roam between the two networks. In its most recent tests of the Dallas market, where both Verizon and AT&T now offer LTE, research firm RootMetrics found that AT&T’s HSPA+ smartphones were clocking average download speeds of 4.3 Mb/s. Though no data was yet available for AT&T’s LTE network (Root only tests smartphones), AT&T like Verizon is promising average speeds between 5 Mb/s and 12 Mb/s. That would make its fallback network less than a megabit-per-second slower than the advertised speeds of its LTE network. Of course, AT&T customers are likely to see massive bandwidth spikes well above 12 Mb/s on LTE at least initially. Despite the ever increasing number of smartphone and broadband access on Verizon’s LTE network, Root has consistently recorded average LTE speeds above 10 Mb/s for VZW and peak speeds approaching 50 Mb/s. Both Verizon and AT&T have deployed LTE in a 10 MHz-by-10 MHz configuration, giving them plenty of overhead. As they begin to fill up those pipes with subscribers, their average speeds will begin to decrease into the ranges they’ve both advertised. AT&T will have a distinct advantage in being able to support consistent mobile broadband speeds both off and on LTE, but at a certain juncture that advantage evaporates. Verizon is aggressively building out new LTE markets and expanding in its current markets. When its LTE network is as ubiquitous as its 3G one, few of its customers will ever leave the LTE footprint. AT&T’s four new LTE markets are Boston and Washington--which AT&T announced at its Q3 earnings call (CP: AT&T doesn’t take Q3 off to wait for the iPhone) and Baltimore and Athens, Ga. In September, AT&T launched LTE in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. AT&T seems to be launching key large markets individually such as Boston and Chicago, while clustering other launches. It has turned up a sizable group of markets in Texas where AT&T is now based deployed Baltimore and Washington together and has expanded its Atlanta footprint to grab nearby Athens. AT&T has promised to launch another six markets by the end of the year. Those will presumably be big markets since it has also promised a total footprint of 70 million pops in those 15 markets. AT&T’s initial LTE smartphones are both Android devices. The HTC Vivid and the Samsung Galaxy Skyrocket share similar specs: both have dual-core processors, 4.5-in. displays, 8-megapixel cameras and support HD recording. The Galaxy appears to be the higher end device, with faster application processing and a higher resolution screen. That explains its higher price tag: $250 compared to $200 for the Vivid with two-year contracts. © 2011 Penton Media |