Will AT&T Light Up LTE Next Month?

Lots of rumors going around - last week IntoMobile claimed AT&T will launch their LTE network in New York City as early as June 30, with plans to offer LTE in Los Angeles on July 24. If it is true this is pretty interesting since AT&T has been running about a year behind Verizon with 4G rollout plans.

To this point in time, AT&T has been saying they would get a few markets up and running with LTE in the second half of 2011, with a complete upgrade of all markets by the end of 2013. The company's primary technology pitch - in response to Verizon's plans to have LTE upgrades in 175 markets by the end of 2011 - has been all about an enhanced 3G service called HSPA+ (sort of 3G on steroids - up to 56 Mbit/s downstream and 22 Mbit/s upstream) getting them over the hump until LTE rolls out next year.

There's also been some rumors that AT&T has told FCC regulators they would speed up  LTE deployment if the T-Mobile merger is approved.

I stress - these are all just rumors!