fbpx

Smart to offer mobile LTE up to 6Mbps

The details are still sketchy but an insider has tipped us last night that Smart Communications will be launching mobile LTE (3GPP Long Term Evolution) this week with promised speeds of up to 6Mbps per subscriber. N

Back in November 2010, Globe demonstrated their mobile LTE with maximum speeds of up to 60Mbps (see story here). Now, it’s Smart’s turn to offer LTE to the public (they also did field tests back in November, about two weeks after Globe did theirs).

3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), is the latest standard in the mobile network technology tree that produced the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies. It is a project of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

The LTE specification provides downlink peak rates of at least 100 Mbps, an uplink of at least 50 Mbps and RAN round-trip times of less than 10 ms. (source: wikipedia)

Unlike the current 3G networks that all of the telcos provide, LTE has a much higher bandwidth capacity so this could help solve the congestion problem (read: slow 3G connections) a lot of the customers are experiencing right now. It’s not clear how their new LTE offering will position against the current 3G network.

LTE USB dongles will be provided (just like the Smart Plug-It dongles they currently offer) for customers to hook up to the service and corresponding monthly service fees have not yet been revealed.

While LTE can easily do between 50Mbps to 100Mbps, they’ll only offer retail subscriptions between 4Mbps to 6Mbps to customers. I’d expect competitive pricing of these subscription to range from Php1,200 to Php2,000 (but that’s just a hunch).

More on this as we get the details on pricing plans, subscription speeds and supported devices. This is great news as we hope to get better service from Smart. My SmartBro Share-It has been conking up for the last few months.

Update 1: They’re calling it Smart Evolution.

Update 2: Public demo will be done in Boracay from April 21 – 24.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 984 other subscribers
Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

27 Responses

  1. Avatar for Vince Vince says:

    Smart and PLDT have a reputation of being totally capless. I hope they will continue that with this new service

    However expect plans to be throttled to maybe 1-4 mbps. And expect congestion once the number of subscribers increases.

    Cap is not the same as congestion and/or throttling

  2. Avatar for Bora Bora says:

    15mbps daw kapag sa loob ng building pero kung sa labas umaabot sa 65mbps

    http://abuggedlife.com/2011/04/22/a-look-into-smarts-prototype-lte-dongle-by-huawei-and-my-first-speed-test/

  3. Avatar for gadgetboi gadgetboi says:

    hi yuga, do you have any idea why providers here claim that they provide such service, and when you get their service you’ll get a speed way way behind their claimed speed? example 3G, in the states 3G is really a fast connection and why the h$ck it’s just the speed of dial up in the Philippines?
    So now they are going for LTE which is close to 4G speed right? Shall we believe them?
    You have an influential blog, i hope you can blog about why do companies here provide substandard service, so it will be given attention.

  4. Avatar for User User says:

    May nakatry na po ba nito sa boracay at kung naabot po ba ang 6mbps download speed?

  5. Avatar for kev kev says:

    100mbs @ 10,000-15,000 per month :)

Leave a Reply
JOIN OUR TELEGRAM DISCUSSION

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *