Verizon's 4G advantage is coverage

Steven Hartley and Julien Grivolas/Ovum
08 Dec 2010
00:00
 
The two USB modems available at launch will retail for $100, and more devices are scheduled to be announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2011. Verizon’s LTE plans are $10 cheaper than its 3G-only plans that offer the same amount of data.
 
Verizon’s pricing is not aggressive compared to other 4G services. The other LTE player in the US, Metro PCS, charges $55 per month, offering unlimited voice (over CDMA), texts, and data through a handset. Sprint (using mobile Wimax) charges $60 per month, which includes unlimited 4G data and 5GB over 3G.
 
Unlimited 4G-only data is $50 per month. T-Mobile has also joined the fray, marketing its HSPA+ network as 4G. It offers 5GB of data for $50 per month, which is reduced to $40 for existing customers.
 
T-Mobile’s rivals are making a lot of noise about it marketing its HSPA+ services as 4G. However, they should be wary of hypocrisy as technically, LTE and mobile Wimax are not 4G either (as defined by the International Telecommunication Union).
 
In fact, T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network compares very favorably with its rivals’ networks. Currently, T-Mobile offers theoretical peak download speeds of 21Mbps, which compares well with the 10Mbps peak offered by Sprint. Sprint’s average download speed of 3–6Mbps is slower than Verizon’s average speed of 5–12Mbps. In 2011, T-Mobile plans to upgrade its network to dual-carrier HSPA+, which will enable it to offer theoretical throughput of 42Mbps.
 
The reason that LTE speeds in the US are far slower than those in markets such as Sweden is because of channel bandwidth. In the US, Verizon is using a 10MHz block of FDD spectrum, which offers lower throughput than the 20MHz blocks used in Sweden.
 

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