4G. It’s everywhere. It’s on the tech sites you read. It’s on the televisions you watch. It’s plastered in advertisements all over the city streets you walk. It was probably in the sandwich you ate for lunch. Cellular carriers around the world are betting the bank on 4G — be it LTE, WiMAX or the newly knighted HSPA+ — and 4G-enabled gear is already starting to flood the market despite the lack of nationwide coverage. More →
Today at CES, Lexar introduced its 32GB Class 10 microSD card designed for mobile devices. The new storage card is capable of reading data at 20MB per second and writing data at 10MB per second; which is double the write speed of the current batch of Class 4 cards (4MB per second).
“We’ve seen a steady rise in the sophistication of smart and mobile phones, and usage trends show a convergence between communication and entertainment,” said Jim Chan, product manager at Lexar Media. “Today’s users rely on their mobile devices, beyond talk and email, for capturing live moments and downloading their favorite content – whether it’s photos, music, or HD video – and they want the flexibility to store and share them on demand.”
The new card is available today on Amazon.com for $149.99. More →
According to Dick Lynch, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Verizon Communications, Verizon Wireless is pushing up the timetable for its LTE rollout, aiming now for a late Q4 2009 deployment. Considering that Lynch said, “We expect that LTE will actually be in service somewhere here in the U.S. probably this time next year,” we can ascertain the initial deployment will be limited in scope and that the date is not set in stone. Nonetheless, such an aggressive timetable suggests that Verizon is trying to get a jump on their US competition and is keeping up with the likes of Japan’s NTT DoCoMo who recently announced that it expects to have LTE commercially available in 2010. Lynch also revealed that femtocell technology will be an important part of LTE deployment. Femtocells will be available for subscribers and will be used to increase the signal strength and range indoors. The LTE femtocells may also include integrated WiFi so non-cellular, WiFi-enabled devices can connect to the LTE network as well. With all this talk of LTE, femtocells, and a target launch of 2009, are you getting excited yet for this new 4G technology? We sure are.
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In a bid to compete with Verizon’s FIOS service, Comcast has just announced that it will begin the roll out of their DOCSIS 3.0 network starting with residential homes and businesses in parts of New England, including the Boston Metropolitan region and Southern New Hampshire. Also included in the roll out are areas of Philadelphia, New Jersey, and the Twin Cities where the wide-band service was launched earlier this year. Hey New Englanders, stop crying about the Bosox and go check your modem logs as it has reportedly gone live in some locations! Comcast has also introduced two new speed tiers for their high-speed service and doubled the speeds for current customers at no extra charge. The speeds and pricing of Comcast’s residential plans are now as follows:
