Verizon Wireless is deploying the world’s first large-scale 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network to 38 markets and more than 60 commercial airports across the nation, covering more than 110 million Americans.
While Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network promises much more than speed, the first application gives employees the ability to work at significantly faster speeds and improved latency, increasing productivity and the opportunity to get work done where their business takes them.
So does this make 4G just a souped-up version of 3G, enabling the same apps, just boosting them on steroids? Not exactly, Notwell said. LTE has more tricks than just faster connection speeds. One of the key yet under-reported features of LTE is its low latency — the time it takes for a packet to make a round trip through the network. 3G latencies can be as high as 750 milliseconds, introducing noticeable delay into data transactions, Notwell said, but LTE drops those numbers to 30 milliseconds.
“The significance of that is anything less than 50 milliseconds is considered real time,” Notwell said. “What happens when you put real time in front of your application?”
The answer to that questions is a number of applications that never made their way from wireline networks to wireless networks. While voice over IP, an application heavily dependent on low latency, has been making its way to the wireless data network, its more sophisticated cousin videoconferencing hasn’t made sizable in-roads. Apple made a splash with the introduction of its Facetime video chat app, but the service is limited to Wi-Fi connections. Low latency will also open up a whole new world of network gaming to the mobile device. Massively multiplayer online role playing games and first-person shooter network death matches are all heavily dictated by network response speeds. You might pull the trigger faster than your opponent, but if his packet reaches the server before yours does, you’re dead.
Verizon Wireless will first have data cards and a MiFi for the new LTE network in mid November 2010. The plans for these devices will be different from the current data plans. I have seen plans starting at $20 for 1GB and up to 10GB for $80.
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