Verizon 4G LTE Tests Planned For Seattle, Boston

suraj.sun writes "Verizon will kick off tests of its LTE network in Seattle and Boston later this year, and is 'working on a commercial launch of LTE service in up to 30 markets next year. LTE is Verizon's next-generation, '4G' network, which will supplement and eventually replace its existing CDMA network and provide average data speeds between 8-12 Mbps. Their ultimate goal is to cover 100 million 'points of presence' nationwide by the end of 2013."

Comments

Latency?

[mcrbids]

Connection speed is almost always rated in Mbps - but that's only half the equation. What about latency?

I have a cellular wireless card that works well enough to enable the 'digital nomad' lifestyle mentioned earlier today, but to say that it's a joy to have latency that bounces between 150ms and 1500ms is taking sarcasm to its extreme.

More than the bandwidth, I want to know if the sub-50 ms ping times I see on a DSL or other 'land line' are going to be likely? Seems lame that transmitting a packetized radio signal for about 2 miles introduces more latency than the other 3,000 miles over fiber optics.

Re:Latency?

[EtaCarinae]

Latency can get below 5 ms under good radio conditions. LTE as well as older standards (W-CDMA etc) has retransmission on top of error correction. LTE uses a rather cool retransmission strategy. Search HARQ. Retransmissions can of course ruin ping times, but even this has been improved in LTE since decisions are being made closer to the antenna in the E-NodeB.

What kind of connection, firewalling and shaping the operator has to the internet is then another matter...

Re:Canada getting 21bps

[balbeir]

I doubt that 21Mbs will be the average speed. They are saying "up-to"

LTE is the 4G successor of HSPA+ so you're not really getting anything state of the art up there in the north. It's more like a squeezed 3.5G lemon

Verizon is advertising 8-12 average speed. LTE is in theory capable of doing 150Mbs

So What About Handsets And Cards?

[rsmith-mac]

If Verizon is getting ready to build a partial network to do testing, where does this put the development and production of the necessary chipsets?

The last I heard, the LTE chipsets necessary for high-power devices (laptop cards, etc) were not expected before late 2010. Chipsets for low-power devices (phones) were a couple of years farther out - 2012 or later. Has this changed, or is this still the right timetable?

It's cool that Verizon is building a LTE network, but if we're years away from having devices that can use it, I guess I don't see the point of it or why everyone is so excited.

Re:So What About Handsets And Cards?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Would you say they are putting the cart before the horse?

I think they are simply solving the chicken and egg problem.

4G

[Anonymous Coward]

8-12 mbit is not 4G.

By definition, the objective of 4G is to support:

+ A nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s while the client physically moves at high speeds relative to the station, and 1 Gbit/s while client and station are in relatively fixed positions as defined by the ITU-R,[3]
+ A data rate of at least 100 Mbit/s between any two points in the world,[3]

Re:4G

[Hammer]

This is a correct definition.
Furthermore LTE is not expected to be 4G That is in the realm of LTE-Advanced

And I guess that this is only to act as some sort of alpha test

Re:Utility

[JPortal]

I think that's the point. They impose caps so that bandwidth isn't saturated (AT&T, anyone?) and if they can accommodate more capacity at higher speeds, they can safely raise the caps too. That's (part of) why AT&T is scrambling to upgrade its networks.