AT&T to launch its first LTE devices in H2 2011, 20 4G phones this year

During its developer summit at CES 2011 today, the second-largest U.S. carrier made it extremely clear that it's not falling behind the LTE game. Just the opposite, AT&T's Ralph de la Vega announced that the carrer will offer its first LTE devices starting the second half of this year. To be more precise, the company announced its plans to release an LTE tablet as soon as this summer.

But back to HSPA+ for a while. Obviously, according to the CEO, both HSPA+ and LTE should be considered 4G technologies. The carrier plans to release 5-7 HSPA+ devices during the first half of the year (including the just announced HTC Inspire 4G, Samsung Infuse 4G and Motorola Atrix 4G), while real 4G LTE-powered products will start hitting the shelves during the second half. For those worrying about coverage, Ralph said that full LTE deployment should be completed by 2013. However, all these LTE devices will be backwards compatible with HSPA+, so there's no need to worry about that one. Among all 20 4G devices expected to make an appearance with the carrier this year, 12 will be Android devices, while a good chunk of the rest will probably run Windows Phone 7, but that's a guess. By the way, Ralph did mention that AT&T will be getting an LTE Apple device sometime in 2012, but, as you might guess, he did not reveal any details about it.

Unfortunately, at the event today we only saw HSPA+ phones and nothing carrying an LTE label on it, but hey, the party isn't over yet. We're sure the carrier will be surprising us with a lot of LTE stuff during the course of the year, so you can count on us to always keep you posted!

source: AT&T