Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is making some startling speed claims for its LTE testbed on the Chinese version of the bullet train, in this week's roundup of what's happening in the world of pre-4G technology.

Huawei has deployed an LTE network to support wireless connectivity on the fast MagLev train, which runs between the center of the Shanghai district of Pudong out to Pudong International Airport on 19 miles of magnetic track that "levitate" the train to achieve speeds in excess of 250 miles per hour. The company is claiming that its test can give passengers maximum uplink speeds of 50 Mbit/s with a 99.5 percent successful handover rate as the train speeds between cells.

ZDNet Australia took the 20-minute ride to test the network. It reports average downlink speeds of 46 Mbit/s and very few dropouts unless another train went past.

Debate over whether Verizon Wireless should really move to tiered pricing for LTE is already heating up in the blogosphere. The operator actually only offers a maximum of 5 Gigabytes a month on its current mobile broadband laptop plan, so "unlimited" has always been a fluid concept in this sector. (See No Surprise: Verizon Talks Tiered Pricing for LTE.)

Surprising news from Pyramid Research suggests that the Middle East will surpass Europe in early adoption of LTE. "We expect LTE adoption in the region to reach 6.1 percent of all mobile subscriptions by 2014, due to strong growth of demand for data services, reliance on mobile rather than fixed access technologies, and the increasingly competitive approaches of the telecom regulators," Pyramid Research analyst Kerem Arsal says. One of the reasons driving strong expected LTE takeup in the region is the lack of wired broadband infrastructure for users that want fast connections.

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— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile