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Verizon Wireless recently introduced XLTE, a new flavor of its high-speed LTE data network that promises the "very best high-speed data experience available on any wireless network in the United States." In reality, XLTE is a solution to address a problem frequently experienced by other carriers: network congestion. When too many people in one area—say, in a large city—try to jump on Verizon's 4G LTE network, the network slows down significantly or bumps the phone user to a much slower 3G network. Not a good thing to happen while you're downloading large files or streaming high-definition video.
To alleviate network congestion, Verizon's XLTE service fattens its LTE data pipe by complementing its existing 700MHz 4G LTE network with the Advanced Wireless Services network it acquired back in 2012 from a consortium of companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks. AWS uses different frequencies of the LTE spectrum: 1700MHz for uploads and 2100MHz for downloads. Together, these three bands of spectrum should open things up considerably.
Or maybe not. These stated frequencies are actually just ranges. What really counts is how much spectrum the carrier actually controls within these ranges, and whether they can be clustered together to make the fatter data pipe (they come in 5MHz chunks). If these spectrum chunks are adjacent to each other, such as 695MHz, 700MHz, 705MHz, 710MHz, the carrier can easily make one big, fat 20MHz data pipe. If they're scattered, the phone may be able to hop from one to another to alleviate congestion or increase its chances of finding a 4G network, but you may not get a faster connection.
XLTE is available in quite a few cities, large and small, and many of Verizon's phones already support XLTE, including all the newest Motorola Droids, Samsung Galaxy S 5, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 Mini, Note 3, and ATIV SE; the Nokia Lumia Icon, the LG G2 and Lucid 3, HTC One M8 and One Max, and the Apple iPhone 5s and 5c.
But Verizon is not the first to take a multinetwork approach to solving network congestion. AT&T, whose 4G service is among the highest rated in Consumer Reports' surveys, has had a dual-network advantage for several years. When AT&T's LTE network isn't available, smart phone users get seamlessly switched to the carrier's HSPA+ 4G network. T-Mobile has a similar advantage, though its network is not as widely available.
Sprint's Spark network strings together three 4G networks (800MHz, 1.9GHz, and 2.5GHz frequencies) to address coverage and congestion problems. But in the process, Sprint Spark phones lost the ability to do what older Sprint 4G phones could: make or maintain cellular data connections during phone calls.
We'll have more on the changing face of 4G service in the coming weeks.
—Mike Gikas
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