Verizon Rolls Out LTE Advanced Across The US

T-Mobile isn't the only carrier with announcements to make today, as Verizon has rolled out increased LTE speeds across the United States. This new initiative is being called Verizon LTE Advanced (otherwise known as LTE-A), which is essentially just another phrase for carrier aggregation, and Verizon says it's now live in 461 locations from coast-to-coast.

This not only includes all the major cities on the map, but also more rural areas, with Verizon saying that LTE Advanced covers 288 million people in all. Verizon isn't charging more for the service, nor do subscribers need to do anything to start seeing the higher-than-usual speeds.

For the uninitiated, carrier aggregation is when a carrier combines the bandwidth from multiple channels – Verizon's using 700MHz, AWS, and PCS spectrum for LTE Advanced – to increase speeds for users. How fast are the new speeds? Verizon is promising a 50% increase in peak speeds over typical LTE for most users, though it notes that dual-channel carrier aggregation has reached a maximum of 225 Mbps, while the company's engineers have experienced speeds topping out around 300 Mbps when triple-channel aggregation is employed. Verizon LTE Advanced uses a combination of both dual-channel and triple-channel aggregation.

Verizon currently offers 39 devices that are compatible with LTE Advanced, including a fair number of modern Samsung devices (ranging back to the Galaxy S6), most every Apple device from the iPhone 6 onward, the HTC 10, and the Droid Turbo 2. Future devices from major manufacturers will come supporting LTE Advanced out of the box, Verizon says. Are you noticing faster speeds where you're at?