LG shows first LTE chip for 4G phones

LG this morning said it has developed the world's first practical chip for 4G-grade cellular access using Long Term Evolution (LTE) as its standard. The 13mm square (0.51in) modem is small enough to fit in a cellphone but is capable of the theoretical peak speeds of LTE, which LG says tops out at 100Mbps downstream and at 50Mbps for uploads. A testbed Windows Mobile device has successfully reached bandwidth of 60Mbps down and 20Mbps up in a real-world example and should lead to slim cellphones with fast data performance, according to LG.

The speed is deemed a breakthrough and should result in phones with Internet performance rivaling better landline connections today. Assuming peak speeds, a 700MB video file would download in less than a minute; four 1080p HD movies could also stream simultaneously, the company says. Separately, LTE is also known to generate much lower latency than most existing forms of 3G and has been deemed more practical for two-way video calling and multiplayer online gaming.

LG doesn't outline its exact plans but expects the first phones based on LTE to ship in 2010 and also intends to launch a notebook adapter card for the standard in the future. The public availability of either will depend heavily on access to LTE networks, though these are expected to be relatively easy to deploy for existing 3G carriers and, in North America, are known to be available sometime in 2010 from carriers such as Bell, Telus and Verizon and will likely include AT&T and Rogers.