Not so fast: testing finds world's first LTE network isn't very 4G-ish

[allaboutsymbian]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/4g-viking-sm.jpg (http://northstream.se/good-things-come-to-those-who-wait-a-little-bit-longer%E2%80%A6/)In a rather disappointing example of "your mileage may vary," market research firm Northstream has put TeliaSonera's shiny new LTE network (http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/14/teliasonera-launches-worlds-first-lte-network-awaits-phones-ea/) -- the world's first to go commercial -- to the test, coming away with some disappointing conclusions. The bottom line is that they never managed to go above about 12Mbps downstream, a pretty wild figure considering that Ericsson is in the process of rolling out (http://mobile.engadget.com/2010/01/20/3-scandinavia-first-out-of-the-gate-with-84mbps-hspa/) 84 purely theoretical megabits per second right now using plain old HSPA+ for 3 Scandinavia. The bright side is that they managed a fat 5Mbps on the upstream and experienced consistently lower latency than on the area's 3G networks; in fact, the firm ended up coming away with a glowing impression of the service, assuming (probably accurately) that this is just the first baby step in finding out what LTE is really capable of. And hey, some lucky jerks are getting over 42Mbps down (http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/16/teliasoneras-43mbps-wireless-data-downloads/), so it's a crap shoot anyway.Not so fast: testing finds world's first LTE network isn't very 4G-ish (http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/22/not-so-fast-testing-finds-worlds-first-lte-network-isnt-very/) originally appeared on Engadget (http://www.engadget.com) on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds (http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/).


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