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Walt Mossberg at the <a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20110105/in-4g-race-verizon-pulls-ahead-with-pricey-speed/">Wall Street Journal</a> has been testing out Verizon's new LTE network and comes away impressed with the speed -- acknowledging that it should be very fast with so few users on it. The network, recently launched in 38 markets and 60 airports covering an estimated 100 million people, should be fast -- given it's currently restricted to USB-modem users who have the money to shell out for the service. Mossberg of course notes that this high price of entry, which includes having to pay up to <b>$10 per gigabyte</b>, certainly isn't doing your wallet any favors:
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Verizon is charging $50 a month for up to 5 gigabytes of data use and $80 monthly for 10 gigabytes. If you run over, the company will bill you $10 for every extra gigabyte. Such data limits aren t new, but, with 4G s much higher speeds, users may find themselves sending and receiving more data more often, and thus breaching the limits more regularly. For instance, in my tests, I was easily able to download a nearly 600 megabyte TV show, something I wouldn t even try with a 3G modem. That one download would have eaten up more than 10% of my monthly cap under the $50 plan.
Verizon currently wants the high pricing, in order to not only make money (duh) but to better portray this service as exclusive and top shelf connectivity for largely business users. We'll likely see Verizon tinker with pricing considerably after they release LTE smartphone sometime in the middle of this year. As for speed, Mossberg clocks in 16 mbps downstream and 6.6 mbps upstream in Washington DC, but saw downstream speeds closer to 6 Mbps in San Franccisco. As for coverage, Verizon today stated at CES they'll double existing coverage within the next six months.
Source: DSLRports.com
