During a media tour of an AT&T Research Lab, AT&T demoed its forthcoming 4G LTE network, which appeared to be outrageously fast, much faster than Verizon’s, reaching download speeds of 28.87 Mbps and upload speeds of 10.4Mbps.
The lab’s demonstrated LTE download speeds are 7 times faster than the maximum 3.77 megabits per second reachable by the currently HSPA network, and uploads were more than eight times as fast.
The test was conducted using a multiple input and output antenna and two levels of spectrum – 700mhz and the Advanced Wireless Spectrum band. AT&T it hoping to obtain more AWS from it’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA.
AT&T is planning to speed up its LTE network development in an effort to have the network largely completed by the end of 2013 – the same time frame provided by Verizon for the complete rollout of their LTE network.
Engineers claimed that the incredible data rates seen are meant to model real-world situations, rather than the maximum speed of the specification, which is much higher. The report did, however, note that sharing those speeds with others on a cell tower would decrease them.
Personally, I question how “real world” these results truly are – I suspect it reflects the AT&T Marketing Department’s version of “real world,” because, as noted, sharing the speeds with others will decrease them, and I doubt very many people have an entire cell phone tower to themselves…