At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, AT&T announced that they would be officially rolling out 4G or Long-Term Evolution technology by 2011. The best part is, Verizon is also going to use the technology even earlier.
Long-Term Evolution or LTE as the cool kids like to call it, is a wireless technology that can theoretically handle downloads of 100 Mbps and uploads of 50 Mbps. That would be about fifteen times the current theoretical 3G speeds.
The biggest reason to get excited for 4G is that we may have better reception since multiple carriers, including Verizon, will be using the technology and customers will have more towers to choose from. This doesn't mean that Apple will soon be switching over to Verizon. Verizon, in theory, would still be using CDMA whenever a 4G signal isn't available. The iPhone's hardware is only capable of using GSM carrier's signals at this time.
All I am saying is, don't get your hopes up quite yet. We are dealing with a lot of variables. Don't forget the fact that the 4G speed numbers are theoretical speeds. In a real world environment you can expect those speeds to be much lower.
[via Electronista]
