Bandwidth on Navy ships is a scarce, expensive commodity. For sailors using non-essential systems, like recreational computers? Dial-up speeds – if they’re lucky. But by the end of the year, for the first time, the Navy will put a 4G LTE wireless network aboard some of its ships, giving a whole new communications tool to sailors and Marines: their smartphones.
It’s been a long time coming — and hardly a secret — but Telstra’s confirmed that it’ll be selling its first 4G Windows Phone 7 handset — and only its third 4G handset overall — from next Tuesday.
LG’s smartphone range has, to date, had some interesting models — but nothing that’s been truly captivating, leaving Samsung and Apple to have the really high-end battles. LG, it appears, is well aware of this, and plans to make up the difference in 4G LTE phones — but not this year.
HTC’s One X is an excellent phone, but it’s currently only available for Optus and Vodafone customers. What happens when you take an excellent phone and add 4G to it?
I’d wondered earlier in the week what was happening with Optus’ April 2012 4G rollout, and was told things were still on track. Optus has just announced the official switch-on, which for launch focuses on 4G wireless dongles.
We noted earlier this week that Optus will be switching on its first 4G LTE services in Newcastle and surrounding areas this week. So it’s hard to see Telstra announcing that it will enhancing 4G services in the same region as anything other than an attempt to maintain its 4G first mover advantage.
It’d be easy to think that Telstra’s the only 4G game in town, because for now, it sort of is. Optus has run some trials in 700Mhz LTE, purchased Vividwireless and did promise that it would have a 4G network up and running around Newcastle in April 2012 while everyone got confused about what 4G actually is. Hang on. It is April 2012. What gives?
Telstra’s Mobile Wi-Fi 4G can deliver blazing speeds to any Wi-Fi capable device you pair it with — as long as you get 4G signal to work in the first place. Mobile Monday investigates whether it’s a hot spot, or just a lot of hot air.
LTE data connections are blisteringly fast — at least, if you can get a signal — but that doesn’t mean researchers aren’t already developing next-generation systems. Now, apparently Huawei has developed a new version of LTE capable of data rates peaking at a jaw-dropping 30Gbps.
