Welcome to brainstoff from how Stuff Works dot com where smart Happens him Marshall Brain with today's question what types of four G phone service are available in the United States today? If you have a smart phone, you may be interested in four G service for the data that comes into your phone. Four G stands for fourth generation and there are currently three systems in the United States
that are advertising for G service. Sprint claimed the title of the first four G network in the United States when it deployed its HTC EVO four G phone on its y max network earlier in two thousand ten. Sprint has y Max in about thirty cities in the United States at the moment. With y Max, you received data at a rate of between three and six megabits per second when ATA is coming into your phone. The second network into the marketplace is t Mobiles hsp A plus network.
Prior to this, hsp A plus has not been officially considered to be four G, so this is a rebranding to some extent, but the rebranding may be warranted because t mobiles hsp A plus network is slightly faster than sprints Ymax network in many cases, but it's only slightly faster, it's still operating in the same kind of three to six megabits per second range as the y MAX network is. On the plus side, hs P A Plus is offered in about twice as many cities as y MAX is
offered in. And then there's Verizon, which is deploying its LTE network. This should be a big deal because LTE has the potential to be ten times faster than either ymax or hsp A Plus, and it could be available in a lot more cities. Now here's the funny thing. Up until recently, four G meant a hundred megabits per set can or more. Verizon might brush up against that if LTE pans out the way they say it well, but even so, it will not be there all the time.
So in the United States we aren't actually getting what used to be called for G. We're just getting something better than three G. It might be years before we see a hundred megabits per second on our phones, or even in our homes for that matter, here in the United States. In other parts of the world, it's a lot different. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Park staff. As we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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