The incredible speeds at which the LTE network technology was tested by Cox Communications are indeed worthy of future internet solutions. However, Stephen Bye, Cox's vice president of wireless services, doesn't seem to agree. Their San Diego and Phoenix AWS and 700 Mhz spectrum networks reached speeds of 25 Mbps and the company's official considers their solution a “complementary” one.

The equipment used was provided by Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei, and although it performed quite well according to present time standards, Bye insisted on detailing the disadvantages that LTE networks have if compared to wired ones. This takes the fun out of the recent discovery and simply brings you with your feet on the ground for a more realistic approach regarding future connectivity solutions.

This comes as even worse news to cable companies such as Cox Communications, which are still hoping to find a way of switching from the traditional wired network to the more flexible and non-intrusive wireless one. According to their tests, solely users that were very close to the cell site were able to reach the top transfer speeds, while those connecting from the edge of the cell were only reaching 10 Mbps speeds.

This is a major concern for the future extension of these networks, like Stephen Bye well puts it, “There is an insatiable appetite out there. Clearly, there's not a good solution to deliver that capacity to users with wireless.” He added that “ At the end of the day, that tonnage has to go over a wired connection.”

Cox Communications is currently developing the soon to be launched (in March) CDMA EV-DO 3G network, which has been built out in AWS spectrum. This new network is also being tested so the final touches can be added before the formal launch.


We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .