FCC approves LTE gear from LG, WiMAX says 'welcome to the party'

It's not anything cool like a phone or a laptop, but LTE gear of any sort operating on North American frequencies is pretty rare at the moment, so we'll take what we can get. LG has slid its LEO3 "user equipment" through the FCC's labs, talkin' Long Term Evolution on the 1700MHz AWS band and filed under the FCC's Licensed Non-Broadcast Station Transmitter category -- in other words, infrastructure equipment that none of us will ever see, but we'll certainly be glad it's there when we're clipping along at 50Mbps or so. Verizon, we know you've partnered with Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, but is there any chance this is your stuff?

[Via Phone Scoop]

[SParklingCYaNide Posted Mar 18th 2009 11:58PM]

See people T-Mobile knew Exactly what they were doing building their 3G network on the 1700 AWS band since they knew all along Transitioning to LTE will be a Breeze, of course we've all already been through this.

- D

[Yank in OZ Posted Mar 19th 2009 2:05AM]

no they didnt !! plus what does that have to do with horrible customer service and a lack of new and or innovative handsets. All this means is tmobile customers will have to wait till 2019 to get LTE.

[oakie Posted Mar 19th 2009 7:50AM]

horrible customer service? i've been with them since 2002 and have never had poor customer service from them. maybe it's because i pay my bills...

[oakie Posted Mar 19th 2009 7:52AM]

IIRC, verizon bought the 700MHz spectrum license during the auction, didnt they? i think t-mobile is majority owner of the 1700AWS spectrum.

[msatlas Posted Mar 19th 2009 8:44AM]

I'm pretty sure Metro PCS and Cricket also bought up a fair share of 1700 MHz spectrum as well. There's been a steady stream of low-end CDMA phones with a 1700 MHz band for a while now.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 19th 2009 10:55AM]

Verizon does own 1700Mhz spectrum licenses just so everyone is on the same page. See http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=99 if you want a more in depth look at the AWS (1700Mhz) holdings.