The carrier has said it expects users to see 5 to 12 Mbit/s average speeds from the network. "That range includes mobility," Sawanobori said on a GSM Association (GSMA) call Thursday.
Neither AT&T nor Verizon is expecting to switch on voice-over-IMS VoIP systems for LTE as soon as the networks go live, it also emerged. Verizon says it's planning to do that in 2011 or 2012, while AT&T is looking at 2012.
Similarly, neither carrier will stop investing in its 3G footprint after LTE is commercially available. Sawanobori says that he expects investment in voice and 3G CDMA networks until the end of the decade.
In other news:
Bonus links:
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile
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Is an average download of 5 Mbps better than Clear WiMAX? If inter-working with legacy 3G isn't there day one I don't see the technical advantages of LTE over WiMAX. Are there capacity, latency or other performance benefits I am not seeing? I understand long term the LTE ecosystem should offer better devices due to vendor adoption but that is 2-3 years away. It would be interesting to see the cost of Verizon rollout compared to Clearwire rollout for a similar capacity and network footprint.