Samsung boasts of first commercial LTE modem for cellphones
By Darren Murph 
posted Sep 2nd 2009 2:29AM
posted Sep 2nd 2009 2:29AM
We can't say that we're absolutely certain that Samsung's not fibbing a little with its latest claim, particularly since NXP rolled out a multi-mode LTE / HSPA / etc. cellular modem way back in June of last year. Whatever the case, we're just stoked to see yet another big player drinking the LTE Kool-Aid, with Sammy developing what it calls the "first LTE modem that complies with the latest standards of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)." The modem, which is being labeled the Kalmia for now, supports download rates of up to 100Mbps and upload speeds around 50Mbps within the 20MHz frequency band. In other words, if your future handset is equipped with this chipset, you could theoretically stream four HD movies with no buffering. Now, if only Samsung would announce a new mobile to go along with this, we'd really have reason to carouse.
I'm really going to have to look into this LTE thing when it comes out. Seems like it will beat the pants off of WiMax 4G.
No way can you get 100 or 50Mbps in a 20MHz frequency band. 20GHz?
LTE supports currently up to 150 mbit/s in 20MHz, so the article is right.
As for the article: please note the subtle "that complies with the latest standards of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project". These standards were in heavy development and have only been recently frozen. That means the NXP device could have never been intended for roll-out in an actual network (which don't even exist yet for the public).
The standards for the hardware were frozen before the software, so NXP's solution could be compliant if they just upgrade their S/W.
HSPA gives you 14Mbps in a 5 MHz band. Add MIMO and four times the bandwidth and there you are...
So this means we're... three years from LTE roll out in major cities (ie NYC) and six years from roll out in medium cities (ie Kansas City)?
As I've had to state to people multiple times, even though the spec technically says it can do 150 Mbps (or up to 300 Mbps with MIMO), you still have to share the channel with multiple users. You must divide that data rate by the number of active users and their effective requested rate. Cell phones will probably be power/processor constrained so they may set their own maximum requested rate. Laptops would probably get faster rates. Although this is all moot if the cell company enforces a data rate cap to limit bandwidth hogs.
The same applies to WiMax. Don't count WiMax out yet though. Updates in 802.16m are down the road with faster data rates. WiMax still has its place in broadband wireless. In the end, it will not be an "winner and loser" situation but "which technology suits my application" type of future. The battle between the standards is all marketing. To the end user, the technology is all transparent.