Verizon Wireless has finally announced their plans to begin development on 4G mobile broadband beginning in 2008. This will utilize LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology. LTE technology for 4G has been tested in Japan with speeds of around 1GB/s, however some early tests have achieved speeds of up to 5GB/s. While speeds like that rarely make it to the states, expect a healthy speed boost in browsing somewhere in the 100MB/s range from Big Red. Trial suppliers for the new 4G network include Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia-Siemens, and Nortel. Expect to start picking up compatible handsets in late 2009, though we certainly wouldn’t bet a BlackBerry 9000 on it.
