There is nothing better than fast, especially when you are talking about your wireless mobile internet carrier. Waiting for that page to load, even with 4G LTE, can be frustrating after using a WiFi signal all day at work or home. Verizon has some good news for customers in 461 major cities coast-to-coast, as well as on less-serviced areas such as highways, country roads, and rural areas. They just introduced Verizon LTE Advanced – which Verizon says will give you 50-percent faster peak speeds at no extra cost. Tami Erwin, head of operations for Verizon’s wireless unit explains that Verizon LTE Advanced works like a turbocharger on a car engine – the boost in speed kicks in only when needed.
Verizon LTE Advanced works with software to combine multiple channels for faster speeds. Verizon also said that you would need one of their 39 LTE Advanced capable phones or tablets to take advantage of this service. These would include the Samsung Galaxy S6 & S7 series as well as the Galaxy Note 5, Note 7 and Moto Droid(s). Verizon state that new devices from Samsung, LG, and Moto would have LTE Advanced capabilities right out of the box. There are no extra fees involved, nothing to turn on and no indicators to check – the feature will work when available or needed.
Verizon LTE Advanced combines two or three bandwidth channels into one large channel – it is called carrier aggregation and can combine 700 MHz, AWS, and PCS spectrum. This combination pushes your data up to 50-percent quicker over Verizon’s already fast network. Verizon LTE Advanced will switch your data back and forth between the fastest lanes available on the network. Verizon said that all customers would continue to have typical download speeds of 5 – 12 Mbps, while LTE Advanced has shown download speeds of 225 Mbps with two channel aggregate and up to 300 Mbps for three channel aggregation.
LTE Advanced has rolled out in other countries as well – Canada’s Bell started rolling out LTE Advanced over a year ago, and NTT DoCoMo in Japan launched theirs in March of 2015. In 2003 Verizon was the first to launch 3G, and it was coast-to-coast by 2005 – next came 4G LTE in 2010 and now in 2016, they are already providing LTE Advanced in 461 major cities across the US. It will continue to grow into more cities and rural areas throughout the year as we wait for the next big 5G upgrade.