Ottawa residents will be first to experience the new Rogers LTE network this Summer. There has been no official launch date announced but the Sierra Wireless Rocket Stick (AirCard 313U) has been deemed the inaugural device. Rogers has future roll-out plans to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver by the end of 2011, then another 25 locations in 2012.
Other carriers such as Bell, TELUS and WIND all plan to deploy LTE in the coming months. TELUS is expecting to be early 2012, but Bell stated they’ll be first and will unleash LTE “in certain Canadian markets in 2011″. The heat is now on as Rogers employees have started training on LTE, a good indication that the testing phase is complete and a launch is imminent.
According to the internal doc we received the training is called “The The Future of Fast” and that “Rogers customers will be among the first in the world to experience Long Term Evolution (LTE), a next generation network that will revolutionize the mobile experience”. The Rogers LTE network is being called “beyond 4G” and will “provide lightning-fast connected experiences” that could bring peak download speeds of up to 150 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 70 Mbps (the fall back is their 4G HSPA+ network). The training is focused on 4 core areas: What is LTE?, How fast is LTE?, LTE beyond 4G and The Customer Experience.
The good news is that every second gets closer to LTE… but who’ll be crowned as being first? Tick tock.
(Thanks tipster!)
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