Korean electronics giant LG has developed an alternative to 3G and WiMax that it claims is over eight times faster at downloading data than the fastest handset currently on the market.
The technology, known as Long Term Evolution (LTE) has been dubbed ’4G’ and can download at 60 megabits per second with upload speeds of around 20 megabits/second. The fastest non-WiMax handsets operate at around 7.6 megabits/second.
“Now that LG has developed and tested the first 4G handset modem, a commercially viable LTE handset is on the horizon,” said LG’s Paik Woo-hyun.
Qualcomm Inc., Vodafone Group PLC, Verizon Wireless and the KDDI Corp of Japan are said to be contributing to the LTE project, which will require a dedicated infrastructure in order to work.
