If you were at the LTE forum today, the biggest news is that SMART Communications is finally taking their LTE service out of closed beta and into commercial availability this coming August 25 2012. There is still no word on official pricing and specific devices (the up and coming iPhone 5 is rumored to have LTE connectivity) but it seems that NTT Docomo, SMART’s partner will be providing the hardware because of the similarity in the spectrum (maybe phones and dongles — who knows?!). Here’s a short list of LTE enabled sites from the beta, which means that more are coming.
So that’s that. August 25 2012. A completely new spectrum. Completely new technology. Huge network overhaul.
