As AT&T tries to meet its goal of rolling out LTE services to 15 markets by the end of 2011, don’t expect to see many smartphones from the carrier that operate on the 4G technology. In fact, one might be it.
Speaking at the Oppenheimer Technology & Communications Conference this week, AT&T CFO Pete Ritcher said he anticipated his company would have at least a – as in one – smartphone by the end of 2011. Who will manufacture it? It’s too early to say, but it now seems highly unlikely it’ll be Apple since we expect to see the next-generation iPhone sooner rather than later.
AT&T has been playing catch-up in the LTE race this year. Verizon Wireless LTE is live in more than 100 markets – the carrier expects its download speeds of 5-12 Mbps to be available in 175 markets by the end of the year. Smartphones, of course, are also an issue. Verizon has three, with a fourth – the Motorola Droid Bionic – expected to launch soon, and the HTC Vigor – packing a 1.5GHz processor – touted as the most powerful smartphone to date, not too far behind. And while some consumer confusion about 4G remains, Verizon Wireless sold 1.2 million of the devices last quarter, up from 500,000 in Q1.
Ritcher told attendees that instead of rushing out LTE, AT&T chose to improve the speeds of its HSPA+ network and wait until LTE smartphones got better and proved themselves before jumping into 4G. And while a glut of new smartphones won’t be on the immediate agenda when the new network goes live, he said we can expect to see dongles and data cards, similar to what VzW offered when its LTE network went live last year.
