With CES going on in full swing, strategic future plans for the entire first half of 2011 are being announced by several companies. AT&T too has unraveled its basic road map for this year. The journey begins with an expansion of its mobile broadband networks.
The carrier has opened up the gates of 4G for its subscribers. The company claims to be the only ones in the U.S to deliver 4G speeds using both HSPA+ and LTE technologies. If until now the mobile broadband speeds from AT&T were fast, the network operator intends to offer supersonic speeds this year.
“AT&T is the only U.S. company committed to both HSPA+ and LTE technologies,” affirmed Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “Today our customers are benefitting as we repeatedly increase speeds on our mobile broadband network. As we accelerate our LTE network build, our customers will have blazing fast LTE speeds and when they go off LTE, they will still have faster mobile broadband speeds with HSPA+ something our competitors will not be able to match.”
“The key to delivering a true 4G experience is to have the combination of network, devices and applications, which together will give our customers the best and most advanced mobile broadband experience today and tomorrow,” stated Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “Recent tax law incentives, along with other policy developments, have allowed us to accelerate the capital investment — beginning in 2011 — to largely complete our LTE network build by the end of 2013. This will not only benefit our customers, but will, we hope, benefit the economy as a whole.”
Coming to smartphones, AT&T’s 2011 journey will witness 20 4G enabled devices being released by the end of the year. Some of these will be offered exclusively on AT&T’s services. Augmenting its Android offering for its loyalists, the network operator intends to release 12 freshly baked devices operating on Google’s operating system. In Q1 two 4G smartphones will hit the streets, while the first six months will witness the launch of at least five to seven 4G smartphones.
This inventory of smartphones has got us very excited thanks to the number of fresh devices that will hit the industry in 2011. With such a wide variety of 4G enabled devices, mobile web surfing will see wide growth.