Sprint bringing 4G to Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco by end of 2010
Sprint Nextel and its Clearwire Corp will bring 4G speeds to Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco by the end of 2010. To remind everyone, currently sprint and most other carriers do not carry true 4G speeds. As the ITU Radio Communication Sector defines 4G as, an advanced cellular system that “must have target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbps for high mobility such as mobile access”. While Sprint’s WiMAX which is what they call their 4G is 10 Mbps at its peak and T-Mobile’s HSPA+ which is what most people call a 4G is at 21-42 Mbps.
New York will have Sprint’s 4G speed by November 1st, while Los Angeles will get it by December 1st, and San Francisco will get it around the end of December. One of the reasons why Sprint is bringing its 4G speeds to these cites is they have a high concentration of people who wants to buy the latest technology. Because of this, New York and San Francisco has been seen as tough markets to support wireless data services. An example of this is, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier, had to invest a lot to fight criticism about its network performance.
It’s also no shock to see this happen as Verizon Wireless plans to roll out a high-speed upgrade to its network in 38 cities that will cover 110 million people by the end of 2010 and T-Mobiles announcement to double its speed by next year.
Below is the difference in speed in the 3 major USA cell phone carriers
Carrier Service Maximum Speed
T-Mobile USA HSPA+ 21 Mbps but T-Mobile will upgrade it to 42 Mbps in 2011
Sprint Nextel WiMAX 10 Mbps at its peak
Verizon Wireless LTE 50Mbps
Please remember that all of those peaks are when only a hand full of people is using the service and the service is broadcast at its fullest speed. So the likelihood that anyone will get the peak performance is low and even Verizon Wireless admitted in a press release that its 50Mbps could go down to 12 Mbps in “real-world results”.
