Not more than a few days ago we put out a story talking about Verizon’s plans to move forward and how they would be improving their 4G LTE network. What it came down to was their plans to re-brand and use the AWS spectrum that they have into what they’re referring to as XLTE, and that they would begin to start deploying that XLTE spectrum to major cities and larger markets by mid 2014. May 19th is the actual date which is just in a few more days from now. While there was already enough to keep the idea afloat, sources at Droid Life as well as a leak from infamous leaker evleaks further confirm the deployment plans for Verizon and their advancement from 4G LTE to XLTE.
As a recap, the deployment for XLTE or the AWS spectrum rollout was to begin in the middle of the year, with Big Red stating that the AWS would be deployed in up to 50 markets by that time frame. Moving beyond that, the continuation of rolling out AWS(XLTE)to the rest of their markets was said to happen over the following 14-18 months or roughly a year and a half. Now, the image leak from evleaks displays the Verizon promotional ad for XLTE, which states double the 4G LTE bandwidth in cities coast to coast. Double the 4G LTE bandwidth sounds good but what else is there?
Thanks to the information we gathered from the source, Verizon’s XLTE will also allow for “faster peak” speeds, and we also know that not all devices will be supported. Compatibility wise the best bet for being able to utilize the upcoming XLTE speeds should be within devices from the last 12 months. The other details point out that their will be no visual change to point out to customers that they’re actually connected to XLTE, nor will they have to do anything to activate it as the XLTE speeds will just simply work. If you currently reside in one of the cities where XLTE will begin rolling out to and get less than desirable speeds, this news should be pretty exciting for you. That’s all the information we have at the moment, but expect more information to surface in a few days when Verizon starts things off.