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We have seen plenty of 4G LTE expansion news coming from AT&T lately. We have seen several announcements this month alone and as of today we have word of expanded coverage across ten states. This latest LTE expansion includes coverage for those in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.

With the majority of new coverage coming for those in Texas, lets first begin with those cities. AT&T has flipped the 4G LTE switch for those in Athens, Corsicana, Huntsville, Nacogdoches-Lufkin and Paris. The next state with multiple markets going live is Florida, which now has coverage for those in Lake City and Ocala.

The coverage for Alabama includes Huntsville, Decatur and Cullman. Those three states aside, the remaining coverage includes one market per state. Going in alphabetical order we have Arkansas up first with LTE coverage now available in Mountain Home. Louisiana is up next with coverage in Shreveport/Bossier City.

Moving on and we have LTE coverage going live for those in Lansing, Michigan; Gulfport/Biloxi Mississippi; Henderson, North Carolina; Chattanooga, Tennessee and Centralia, Washington. As always, this is just another round of AT&T LTE expansions. Otherwise, those in these areas who already have an LTE capable device, now seems like as good a time as any to begin taking advantage of these increased speeds.

T-Mobile launched their LTE network back towards the end of March with coverage for seven markets. While seven markets is fairly small as compared to carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T, T-Mobile had previously announced plans to have LTE available for 100 million users by mid-year and 200 million users by years end.

We have yet to see any specifics from T-Mobile on which will be the next markets to go live, however some details have recently begun showing up online. Basically, it is looking like the T-Mobile LTE rollout will continue in May and then again in June. Neither of these will are expected to be large scale, but it does appear as if things are progressing nicely towards that mid-year goal of 100 million.

The May rollout is tipped to include Honolulu and Maui, Hawaii and Richmond, Virginia as well as Minneapolis and Austin/San Antonio. Other markets that are a possibility for launch in May include Stockton and Modesto as well as parts of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont.

Time will tell if these launches arrive in May as is currently expected. Otherwise, there isn’t as much detail in terms of the June launches at the moment. As of now it is being reported that T-Mobile is planning for as many as 24 LTE market launches in June. All said and done, assuming these locations and numbers hold up, T-Mobile could be looking at around 40 LTE markets by June.

[via TmoNews]

AT&T seems to be offering these 4G LTE expansion updates on a fairly regular basis these days. The most recent came back on April 18, however we have been seeing these types of expansion announcements several times a month lately. On that note, this latest touches on coverage across eight states including Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Virginia and West Virginia.

Keep in mind that some of these are new markets and some are expansions of previously covered markets, lets first begin with Colorado. The Colorado coverage deals with Denver, which has been expanded to include parts of Golden and Lakewood. Some new coverage has been turned on for those in Kokomo, Indiana as well as Shelbyville, Kentucky and Flint, Michigan.

Previously existing coverage in Northwest Mississippi had 4G LTE available for those in Oxford. This expansion brings LTE to parts of Batesville along Highway 6, Sardis and South Oxford. Shifting back to another new market and those in Springfield, Missouri will now have the option to use LTE. New coverage has also been turned on for those in Petersburg, Virginia and for those in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Otherwise, looking the 4G AT&T network as a whole and we see the carrier still touting themselves as having the “nation’s largest 4G network.” To clarify, that includes the HSPA+ and LTE networks, which according to AT&T, is now accessible by more than 292 million people. AT&T users also get access to the nationwide hotspot network, which has 32,000 locations spread across restaurants, hotels, bookstores and retailers.

Previous reports pegged voice-over LTE support as coming to Verizon Wireless in 2013, however based on new details it is now looking as if that support will not be arriving until next year. These latest details come by way of Verizon CFO Fran Shammo who said the voice-over LTE support would be launching commercially in “early next year.”

While that may sound like a bit of bad news for anyone that may have been waiting, there does appear to be a silver lining. It seems Verizon is readying voice-over LTE capable devices for the later part of this year. Shammo didn’t offer specifics here, however based on details from Light Reading, Verizon will “start to have VoLTE-capable phones by the end of this year.”

Basically, that is just to say that devices should be ready and available before the launch of the network. This move will not really mean all that much for the average user initially, but longer term they will likely notice some changes. These changes will come to the types of devices that consumers begin seeing.

In this case, given the voice-over LTE support allows for voice calls alongside data on the 4G network, we will begin seeing devices without any 3G CDMA chips. The introduction of voice-over LTE is a baby step towards the eventual reuse of the current 3G network. Of course, that will likely not be happening anytime soon. Otherwise, AT&T has also said they are planning to have a limited launch of voice-over LTE in place for later this year.

[via phoneArena]

Rather than a Nexus 5 is there a chance that Google releases a new version of the Nexus 4 this summer? According to a new rumor that is making the rounds and appearing in our inbox far too often, this is the word on the dark, back alley, make-sure-you-have-a-tight-grip-on-your-purse, streets. The rumor is this – [...]
Weird Rumor: 32GB Nexus 4 With CDMA and LTE to be Announced at Google…



Click the post title to continue through and join the conversation!

Could Google and LG be working on a 32GB Nexus 4 running Android 5.0, and sporting LTE and CDMA radios for Google I/O? According to SIDHTECH, this may well very be the case. They go on to speculate that a Nexus 5 at I/O is probably unlikely because the Nexus 4 was released last summer. However an updated Nexus 4 is more likely. 

If this new rumor is true, this version of the Nexus 4 could work on Sprint and Verizon’s networks, it would have LTE , and more storage. I know a lot of readers were down on the Nexus 4 for a lack of some or all of these features. It also is reported to be launching with the Android 5.0, which is rumored to be called Key Lime Pie. Maybe this is Google’s and LG’s way of correcting a bad mistake in not offering these things from the beginning. If so, let’s hope they do a better job with the supply issue this time. 

Source: SIDHTECH
Via: TechnoBuffalo

Come comment on this article: Nexus 4 with 32GB of storage, LTE/CDMA, and Key Lime Pie could be revealed at Google I/O

We have been seeing quite a bit of LTE expansion from AT&T as of late and it looks like we now have some news coming from Big Red. In this case, Verizon Wireless has announced their latest round of new and expanded 4G LTE coverage. This latest touches on markets across several states to include California, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Beginning first with the new markets. These include El Centro, California; Fort Dodge, Iowa; Middlesboro/Harlan and Paducah, Kentucky and East Liverpool, Ohio. Shifting over to the expanded coverage and we have Bedford County and Huntingdon County, both of which are in Pennsylvania.

This round of 4G LTE expansions also comes with some additional coverage for those in Ohio. The Ohio expansions include Cambridge and Senecaville as well as areas of Northeast Ohio. The northeast coverage includes parts of Toledo, Cygnet, Luckey, Archbold, Delta, Pioneer and Ridgeville Corners as well as Swanton, Ft. Jennings, Cairo, Leipsic, Benton Ridge, Mt. Cory and Rawson.

Coming with this latest round of expanded and new coverage, Verizon Wireless has said they now have LTE service available for 287 million people and across 491 markets. Perhaps a bit more telling though, the Verizon LTE coverage is now available in 95 percent of the current Verizon 3G footprint.

[via Verizon Wireless]

While maybe not as big of a push as we have seen with some of the recent AT&T LTE expansions, it looks like the carrier has announced additional coverage for three markets across three states today. The expansion deals with Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming. The new coverage for today includes the cities of Cushing, Florence and Cheyenne.

Basically, this means if you happen to be eligible for an upgrade and living in any of those three cities — it may be a good time to make sure the device you choose has LTE connectivity. Or if you already have an LTE capable device, head out and begin enjoying the speed increase.

Touching specifically on Wyoming and in this case AT&T has said they have invested more than $30 million between 2010 through 2012 in an effort to “enhance speeds, reliability and performance for customers.” Otherwise, in addition to the expanded coverage, AT&T also took some time to tout the network as a whole.

In this case, AT&T is reminder users that “unlike some competitors” they can offer 4G speeds outside of LTE covered areas. By that they are referring to the existing HSPA+ network. And what AT&T announcement would be complete without a mention of their hotspot network, which is now said to have 32,000 across the US.

It seems like AT&T has been doing quite a bit of growth in terms of LTE coverage these past few months. We saw several LTE expansion announcements during the month of March and have already seen one this month. That previous announcement arrived on April 3 and detailed coverage in 14 new markets across 11 states. As of today we have word of six additional markets.

This latest round of coverage also deals with several states. This time the AT&T LTE coverage is rolling into Napa, California; Santa Rosa-Petaluma, California; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Rocky Mount, North Carolina; Orangeburg, South Carolina and Jackson, Tennessee. Basically, those in any of these areas can now begin to look for 4G LTE coverage.

And for those with an upgrade available, make sure you are now looking at LTE capable handsets — of which AT&T has plenty, including the soon to be released HTC One. Those considering that handset may benefit from reading our recently published review. Moving forward and it looks like AT&T has plenty of coverage in the works for the summer months.

We have yet to see a specific timeline for the summer rollout, however we do know that it will mean coverage for an additional 77 markets. Of those markets ready to come online during the summer, the coverage looks to be spread across multiple stats including Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, Texas and Wyoming.

EE, who happen to be the first (and only) carrier in the UK to offer 4G have recently announced some upgrade plans. The carrier has said they plan to double the speed and capacity of their 4G network. We have yet to see a specific date as to when this will be going live, however those increased speeds should begin arriving during the summer months.

Basically, this means some EE 4G customers could be seeing ‘headline’ speeds upwards of 80Mbps. More realistic though, there was also the mention of this doubling the current average speed to 20Mbps for new and existing subscribers. The double speed upgrades will be coming to ten cities initially. These include Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield.

Shifting over to the expansion of the network and EE is talking about future-proofing. In this case they are looking to target more than one million 4G users by Christmas and “stay one step ahead and always offer the fastest network in the UK.” They also plan to have the network traffic increase by 750 percent over the next three years time.

This simply means users in those ten cities will soon be enjoying some increased speeds. And in a simpler form, that means those users will be able to download, surf and stream content that much faster than before. EE originally launched their 4G network in October 2012 and as of this coming June, they plan to have coverage available in 80 towns and cities with coverage for roughly 55 percent of the UK. They also hope to have 98 percent of the population covered by years end 2014.

[via EE]