For a year or so my friends and I have enthusiastically awaited the arrival of real “4G”. When I say this, I mean LTE. Carriers are using all kinds of gimmicks and tricks to call their networks 4G, but the fact of the matter is they aren’t there yet. Verizon is first to party as it has already rolled out its LTE implementation in several markets. Over the past year or two I’ve assumed, along with many others, that when AT&T pushes out its LTE implementation, users would be able to take their device from one network to the other. This is currently not possible because Verizon runs on a “CDMA” network while AT&T runs on the more popular (globally) “GSM” network.
In the past few days it has come out that even though they will be using the same type of network, they will not be using the same spectrum of that network. What does this mean for you and me? Well, it looks like we’re not going to be able to jump from one carrier to another and keep our same phone, at least not unless the manufacturer of the phone puts a radio that covers both spectrums….