Verizon and AT&T claim they have fast 4G speeds on their LTE networks and Sprint is going to launch a similar wireless network later this year. The download speeds for those LTE connections are usually between five to 12 Mbps. Now GigaOM reports that Clearwire claims it will have a much faster network in place in 2014.
How much faster? Clearwire says that its LTE-Advanced network will have download speeds as fast as 168 Mbps. The company will use what is called carrier aggregation to basically stack carriers on top of each other. The end result is Clearwire's network will have a carrier size that's 40 MHz in width, compared to the 20 MHz width that's available for Verizon and AT&T’s current LTE network.
In fact, Clearwire could go ahead and create that carrier size right now but the technology to handle it isn't quite ready. The company's CTO John Saw says that will be all set to go in 2014.
The article points out that having such a high theoretical speed sounds good for PR but in the end, wireless carriers really want to send out a slower but consistent cell phone signal out to more people at the same time. As all wireless phone and data users know, that can be difficult under the best of circumstances.
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